Norris,who set the fastest pace late in the grand prix,ate into Verstappen’s lead in the driver standings,but with just four rounds left in the championship,the Red Bull star has one hand on his fourth-straight title.

Still,it was a dirty day for his team in Mexico,with out-of-form local hope Sergio Perez slugged a penalty for starting the race outside the boundaries of his grid box and finishing a distant 16th,well off the pace.

After a disastrous end to his qualifying,Australian star Oscar Piastri started 17th on the grid and had a frustrating opening to the race on his medium tyres as he struggled to overtake the backmarkers around him.

But as the race progressed,his pace improved,and he clinched a series of telling overtakes under braking – ultimately finishing eighth after pitting for hard tyres late on lap 39.

The action-packed day of racing started with controversy with an incident involving Pierre Gasly,Alex Albon,and Yuki Tsunoda – taking the latter two out of the race and bunching up the rest of the field behind the safety car until the end of lap six.

In his track-side interview immediately following the race,Norris again made his feelings about Verstappen clear.

“It was a very tough race. The first few laps,a lot of it was just trying to stay in the race and avoid any crashes,” he said.

“I didn’t want to expect such a thing because I respect Max a lot as a driver,but I was ready to expect something like this and this is not very clean driving,in my opinion,but I avoided it and it was a good race.”

A week ago in Austin,it was Norris who was penalised – delivering a podium placing for Verstappen and leading to him extending his championship lead ahead of the Mexico City race.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was interviewed on Sky post-race about Verstappen’s clashes with his title rival,Norris.

“The problem is I think we’re going to get into very dangerous territory of ... at what point is a dive-bomb (overtaking move) going to be OK?” he said.

“So I think,really,the FIA and the drivers need to sit down and decide what is acceptable,and what isn’t. I thought two 10-seconds (penalties) was a bit on the harsh side today.

“You’ve always got to play to the rules,and we’ll look and learn from this race. I think,more important for us to understand today – we just didn’t have the pace … our race pace was nowhere compared to the Ferrari and McLaren,so that’s really where our focus will be over the next five days.”

Verstappen was also interviewed about his side of the controversy.

“The problem is that,of course,when you’re slower,you’re being put in those kinds of positions. I’m not going to give up easily. I mean,at the end of the day,it’s also not about agreeing or disagreeing about the penalty,” he told Sky.

“The thing is,20 seconds – it’s quite a lot – but the biggest problem of today ... is the race pace,which was really not good and something that we need to analyse because even without those penalties we had no chance at all to fight up front.”

Despite Norris gaining 10 points in the drivers’ championship hunt,Verstappen said he wasn’t worried as the F1 attention shifts to the next race in Brazil.

“This was just a really bad day for us,but I also know that we can do much better than this so we’ll just keep going at it,” he said.

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