🇲🇽 F1'25 R20: Heat

🗓️ What’s coming up…

The loudest noise in F1 at the moment isn’t the roar of the engines. It’s the sound of thousands of fans at the Mexican Grand Prix showing their disapproval at the new championship leader.

Lando Norris utterly dominated the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. At high altitude, Lando rose highest (that pun works in David Croft’s voice) to lead the Drivers’ title by a point from a rapidly desynchronising Oscar Piastri. Max Verstappen is still there too, but for now, this is Lando’s story, and while McLaren continue to treat both drivers equally through what Toto Wolff reportedly called their “fruity rules”, the crowd in Mexico are not happy.

And it’s fair to say they won’t be alone. Verstappen will have fans, Piastri will too and they will want to see their favourite driver win the title. obviously. The beauty of Formula 1 is that it is an AND sport. You can support Williams AND Esteban Ocon, for example. Pierre Gasly AND F2’s Invicta. Sauber AND Lance Stroll. Well, maybe. Let’s face it, it’s not like Lando Norris won’t have fans. He’s built such a strong fanbase, as evidenced by the LandoStand being marketed by Silverstone when selling some hugely expensive tickets. Quadrant fans, or seeing him go on a Chicken Shop Date, or even going on This Morning.

Then there’s the mythical British bias. If you’re not British, it’s the sort of thing you’ll see everywhere. The teams are mainly headquartered in Britain, the sport is mainly broadcast with a British accent and everyone who believes the bias will have at least one anecdote they’ll point to that proves there is bias.

I’m British, so I don’t really hear it, and it feels immature to me that a crew of professional broadcasters so badly want a champion they share a passport with that it would show through on a TV broadcast. But maybe it’s his nationality is what makes Norris the heel in this equation.

Same as it ever was, really. In 2022, it took Sergio Perez to ask the home crowd not to boo Lewis Hamilton. One year after the heated Hamilton-Verstappen battle, that booing might come down to Mexican fans siding with then-Perez’s team.

The reaction of the 2025 crowd in Mexico made for an easy storyline in a Grand Prix where the new championship leader won by an almost laughable margin. Half a minute ahead of the field, the other thing that causes people to dislike you is constantly being at the top. Formula 1 fans celebrate unusual podiums and results, and nine drivers have finished somewhere in the top 3 this year. Nico Hulkenberg’s first podium in 239 races, Isack Hadjar’s wonderful drive in Zandvoort, completing a cycle of redemption that started by not starting in Australia.

The reason for the booing IS the domination. McLaren seem all but out of ideas on how they celebrate wins. This team posted the below after they won the Constructors’ this year, but they’d already won the title in 2024, so they would have woken up as champions anyway? 

Bad social copy aside, winning might still feel special to McLaren fans, but the team themselves don’t seem that bothered anymore when Piastri or Norris cross the finish line first. Maybe that’s another reason why Norris is booed. If Piastri had won, would he have been booed too?

To Norris’ credit, he says the boos don’t bother him. Whether he’s serious about that, I’m not so sure. Of all the front-running drivers, he seems to be the one who wants people to like him. A driver who has been so open about mental health and one who has been even more open while driving the car, it can’t be good for your psyche to be at the top of your sport and having at least part of the world actively dislike you.

That said, this is elite sport. It is impossible to please all the people all the time, and the best athletes ignore the noise completely, or play back into it, feeding off it. Maybe there are still levels to unlock for Lando, becoming available to him when a crowd is turning on him.

The one thing I don’t agree with, however, is people saying fans shouldn’t boo. I can totally see the perspective that you should cheer louder for who you want, but again, this is elite sport! NFL fans make their voices heard on third down, football fans will jeer and boo literally every move an opposition makes and fans want to see their driver win. If booing gives their driver the edge, why wouldn’t you? As long as it doesn’t extend into abusing fans and doesn’t cross a line, fans should be allowed to express themselves. If your reaction to that just isn’t cricket, well…it’s not!

We move into the last four races of the season, and there are still two Sprint races too. Brazil is next, and should be the headquarters of the short format. There is a Sprint in Sao Paulo next week, but there isn’t one in Brazil in 2026, which I find totally bizarre. The 2024 edition of Interlagos was a Max Verstappen masterclass and a genius Alpine strategy that led to a double podium. Only one of those seems likely in 2025, and despite the six points-scoring events still on the table, if Verstappen is going to continue his charge, Brazil has to be another turning point in a season that is turning into a drama no one can script. 

The South American crowd will be exceptionally vocal, and it will be interesting to see how they react to Lando Norris, who appears to have settled into the role of “bad guy” of the three drivers left, something which felt unthinkable even a few months ago.

📖 Those good Threads

Would you want to see refuelling return to F1? (Yes)

As a Norwich City fan (it’s not fun at the moment), I’m enjoying the Max Verstappen merch drop for Brazil

Aston Martin are having fun with their Toy Story drop. Altogether now… The Claaaaaaaaw

🪦 The headline reference 

All the headlines in 2025 are wrestling references.

Heat is one of those wrestling terms that most non-wrestling followers will know. From Wikipedia: “Heat typically refers to a negative reaction that a wrestling character gets from a crowd in a performance setting, it has also become slang for a negative reaction that a wrestler gets backstage from colleagues, management or both. Backstage heat can be garnered for both real and perceived slights and transgressions”

Thanks for reading