Mexico’s stadium turns up the volume: boos for Lawson as Norris takes the win
Sunday’s Mexico City Grand Prix wasn’t just loud – it had an edge. Lando Norris waltzed to his sixth win of the season and the championship lead, but the post-race soundtrack inside the Foro Sol carried a harder note: boos. Not only for Norris – who copped it again for the Monza team orders saga – but also for Liam Lawson, who found himself on the wrong side of a passionate home crowd still raw about Sergio Perez’s Red Bull exit.
Fan footage from the weekend shows a smattering of jeers trailing Lawson’s Racing Bulls as he threaded through Turns 4-6. It wasn’t a full-throated chorus, more a pointed pocket of disapproval. Still, the message was clear. Lawson’s appointment as Perez’s replacement at Red Bull over the winter, and the volatile two-race stint that followed before Yuki Tsunoda was promoted into that seat, hasn’t been forgotten in Mexico.
Lawson’s past with Perez at this circuit didn’t help either. Their 2024 tussle here was already spicy – complete with a middle-finger moment – and memories in these grandstands are long.
If the mood was unkind, the race was brutal. Lawson’s Sunday lasted five laps. Launched into a three-wide squeeze at Turn 1, he copped heavy contact with Carlos Sainz’s Williams and came away with a broken front wing and a Swiss-cheesed floor. Racing Bulls boxed him, but the damage was terminal.
He didn’t mince words over the radio. “Oh my God, are you kidding me? Did you just see that? Oh my God dude. I could have f***ing killed them!” That wasn’t about Sainz – it was about two marshals Lawson encountered on his in-lap, deployed to clear debris at Turn 1 as he circulated back to the pits. He later called the first-corner hit “race-killing,” estimating the damage cost him three seconds per lap.
“I don’t think he’s done it intentionally… but you can’t just decide to cut the chicane without looking to your left,” Lawson said after retiring. “He’s hit me so hard that it’s destroyed the whole side of the floor, broken my front wing and just killed our race… You’ve got to have more awareness, honestly.”
It was a messy end to a messy weekend for the New Zealander, who’s spent 2025 in the full glare of a Red Bull ecosystem that hasn’t been shy about making changes. Lawson arrived at pre-season testing with one of the biggest jobs in racing: slotting in alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull Racing. Two rounds in – Australia and China – and that door closed. Tsunoda was promoted from the third race in Japan, leaving Lawson back in blue at Racing Bulls with something to prove and not a lot of time to prove it.
He didn’t get the chance in Mexico. The boos were largely for history and politics; the DNF was pure first-lap attrition.
Norris, meanwhile, is busy writing the other half of this season’s story. He led from pole and simply disappeared, winning by more than half a minute to nudge one point clear of Oscar Piastri in the standings with four rounds left. Max Verstappen sits 36 adrift in third. Even with a trophy in hand, Norris couldn’t dodge the stadium’s scorn during interviews or the podium. The McLaren driver shrugged it off with a grin: people can do whatever they want.
It’s harsh, but it’s Mexico. The Foro Sol is a cathedral of emotion. It cheers its own and lets the rest feel it. You don’t have to like the soundtrack, but you can’t pretend it’s not part of the weekend.
For Lawson, the key now is to get out of Mexico with clarity and a car in one piece. He’s shown flashes this season, but the scoreboard won’t show flashes – only finishes. Racing Bulls could’ve used a clean one here. Instead, they’ve got bin bags full of carbon shards and a driver frustrated by a lap-one hit and a hair-raising brush with marshals.
The wider fallout? It’ll simmer. Perez remains the most successful Mexican driver in F1 history, and his exit from Red Bull still stings at home. Lawson didn’t make that call, but he’s wearing its consequences in certain grandstands. That’s the job sometimes. And the only reliable way to quiet the noise is to go quicker than it.
Next stop: a new weekend, a new crowd, and a chance for Lawson to turn the volume down the best way he knows how. By staying out of trouble and finishing where the cameras can’t ignore him.
