Perfect strategy
The comeback from fifth to third place—with second denied partly due to the Virtual Safety Car deployment in the last two laps—allowed Max Verstappen to reduce his gap at the top of the championship. The Dutchman arrived in Mexico 40 points behind the leader and leaves with 36 points to make up. For Verstappen, it makes little difference whether the leader is Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris. The result keeps him firmly in contention for the title, but what impresses most is how this podium was constructed.
Red Bull’s superstar struggled in the first part of the race and, after contact with Lewis Hamilton, found himself stuck in fifth. At that point, strategy came to his aid, allowing him to extend his stint on medium tires until lap 38 before switching to softs for the second part of the race. It was here that Max Verstappen, restarting in P8 after the pit stop, created his true masterpiece.
Like Schumacher in 1998
Between laps 39 and 68—the last green-flag lap before the Virtual Safety Car—Verstappen completed 29 laps all within the 1:21.1 to 1:21.6 range. Only two laps peaked at 1:21.6, on laps 46 and 68. The most remarkable sequence came between laps 49 and 56, when the #1 Red Bull driver recorded eight consecutive laps with a maximum gap of just 159 thousandths of a second between his fastest and slowest laps. On laps 63 and 64, he even replicated the exact same lap time to the thousandth: 1:21.434.
This performance recalls Michael Schumacher’s famous stint at the 1998 Hungarian GP, when the Ferrari driver won by making an extra pit stop compared to David Coulthard and Mika Häkkinen’s McLarens, completing 19 laps at near-qualifying pace. Max Verstappen partially mirrored that feat on Sunday: while it wasn’t enough for the top step of the podium, it kept him firmly in the fight for the World Championship. The artistry, even 27 years later, is the same.
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