Lando Norris didn’t just win in Mexico City — he walked away from the field. By the flag, the McLaren driver was more than half a minute clear of Charles Leclerc, with Max Verstappen third, and the kind of serene control that makes title runs feel inevitable.
What followed was anything but: a swell of boos inside the Foro Sol as Norris stepped up for interviews. It wasn’t universal, but it was loud enough to cut through. Norris handled it with a shrug — head down, one weekend at a time — but the reaction lit up the paddock.
Sam Bird, the former McLaren Formula E race winner and ex-Mercedes F1 tester, didn’t mince words on the BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast. In short: poor form. In longer form: you don’t boo a masterclass.
Bird also tackled the narrative doing the rounds online — that McLaren is tipping the scales in Norris’ favor over Oscar Piastri. He doesn’t buy it. In Bird’s view, what we’re watching is a driver who has simply executed better over the past month. That’s it.
The race itself didn’t leave much to argue about. Once the opening-lap corner-cutting chaos behind was unwound and Norris had the lead back in his pocket, he disappeared. Mexico’s stadium roared for Leclerc and Verstappen; it had a different mood for the man who’d just taken maximum points. If there’s a subplot here, it’s the perception game.
Norris, for his part, leaned on recent history to push back. Asked post-race about claims he was being “handed” the championship — Monza’s team orders getting a specific mention — he pointed out that McLaren’s calls tend to balance out. In Italy, he was boxed first and a slow stop flipped the order; the swap back was, in his words, a correction. And there’s the flip-side example he likes to cite: Budapest, when he was asked to return position and Piastri kept the win. Different weekend, same principle.
You can agree or disagree with the decisions in isolation. But it’s a stretch to argue McLaren’s playing favorites when both drivers have benefitted and lost out at different moments. Internally, that’s how the team frames it. Externally, the noise is louder when the stakes are this high.
And the stakes are now sky-high. With four grands prix and two sprints left in 2025, Norris has nudged back into the lead of the Drivers’ Championship by a single point over Piastri after Mexico, with the Australian finishing fifth. That razor-thin margin is catnip for conspiracy theorists and diehards alike. It also means McLaren’s margin for error is nonexistent.
Bird’s view cuts through the static: if you’re going to boo anything, boo the circumstances. Boo the idea that a race can be won by half a minute in modern F1. Don’t boo the driver who delivered it. Norris didn’t write the script — he just read it perfectly.
There’s also something awkwardly flattering about being booed after a beatdown. Drivers will tell you they’d rather be the villain on the top step than the hero in fourth. Norris isn’t trying to play either role. He’s turned into the quiet center of McLaren’s push — less meme, more menace — while Piastri has remained relentless enough to keep him within a single point. That’s a compelling championship fight, not a stitched-up one.
Mexico provided the clearest glimpse yet of the balance inside Woking: clinical calls, clean execution, and a driver operating at full clarity. If the Foro Sol didn’t love it, the stopwatch did. And in a sport that decides everything by hundredths, that’s still the only cheer that matters.
The only certainty from here? More noise. More subplots. More split-second decisions that will be cast as conspiracies by Sunday night. Norris won’t care if he keeps driving like this. McLaren won’t either if they lift silverware in Abu Dhabi. The rest of us should enjoy what we’ve got: two teammates, a single point, and the very real prospect that the title swings on one radio call or one pit gun click. That’s not favoritism. That’s Formula 1.
