Jenson Button has given his verdict on the impeding incident involving Lando Norris of McLaren and Red Bull ace Max Verstappen in qualifying for the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Verstappen and Norris are set to share the third row of the grid for Sunday’s Mexico City GP at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez after they qualified P4 and P6 on Saturday. Red Bull will see Verstappen drop to P5 on the grid after his one-place penalty for an incident in FP2.

The stewards hit Verstappen and Liam Lawson with one-place grid penalties in Mexico after watching them trip over themselves on preparation laps during FP2 on Friday. Verstappen’s penalty means Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli will move up to P4 on the grid this Sunday.

Lewis Hamilton has his first pole for Ferrari at the Mexico City GP – Let's hear your big takeaways!

Verstappen was a contender for pole position, but would only set the fourth-fastest time in Q3 with a 1:16.692 after a costly lock-up in Turn 13 after catching McLaren racer Norris and Red Bull teammate Isack Hadjar going slowly into the stadium section as he looked to push.

Instead, Lewis Hamilton scored his first pole with Ferrari for the Mexico City GP, marking his first pole since 2023 and making him the oldest F1 polesitter since 1982. Hamilton took pole on a 1:16.514, while Verstappen set a 1:16.692 for P4 and Norris in P6 did a 1:16.824 in Q3.

Verstappen had set a new overall best first sector split time of 26.785s to trump the 26.852s that Hamilton set on his pole position lap. The four-time champion even set a new personal best 30.032s middle sector to the seven-time champion’s 30.030s. Yet Verstappen only set a 21.979s final sector split time to Hamilton’s 19.632s, as his lock-up ruined his bid for pole.

Button believes it was clear that Norris, more so than Hadjar, cost Verstappen at Turn 13, as the 2025 champion was crawling in the braking zone while trying not to impede the man he beat for the title last term. Norris’ positioning meant Verstappen could not attack the left-hand hairpin in the stadium section as easily as he would have wanted, and thus lost pole.

“It’s tricky,” Button said on Sky Sports F1 (31/10, 22:48): “You could say he’s out of the way; downforce-wise, it’s not really affecting him. But it’s hurting your eye line and your braking point for the corner.

“Also, [in] the latter part of braking, he’s got the car on the left-hand side with a flashing rear light, which also upsets your vision of the apex of the corner. So, he had two cars there, and it definitely hurt his entry into the corner.”

Verstappen made a huge lock-up into Turn 13 that destroyed his hopes of denying Hamilton pole position for the Mexico City GP after he tried to thread the needle between Norris and Hadjar. Without a lock-up, Verstappen may have at least beat Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to P3.

Norris did all he could to avoid impeding Verstappen once McLaren had told the 26-year-old to pit and draw his Q3 session to a close. But McLaren only informed Norris that Verstappen was on his heels and on a flying lap when the Red Bull racer flew by his former F1 title rival.

With Hadjar also crawling on the inside at Turn 13, Verstappen was further distracted as he looked to brake for a crucial corner. But Norris’ positioning on the outside caused the most problems for Verstappen, after he had to divert his line and try to change his braking point.

Speaking immediately after the session, Verstappen reiterated that he felt he had lost time due to the dirty air from Norris driving slowly through Turn 12. The Dutchman even claimed he “couldn’t believe my eyes” that Norris was on the right-hand side of the circuit into T12, which meant he could not brake where he would have wanted with a clear piece of tarmac.