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It wasn’t a classic, but a nonetheless intriguing Mexican Grand Prix gave Formula One plenty to consider in the final month of the 2016 season.
After 71 laps of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez the result was only partially clear – grievances were yet to be aired and penalties were still to be applied.
Lewis Hamilton took the chequered flag ahead of teammate Nico Rosberg, but the battle for third was hotly contested, with Max Verstappen the first to cross the line ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo.
A late-race Vettel lunge on Verstappen had the Dutchman locking up and cutting turn one, enabling him to keep the lead.
So blatant was Verstappen’s advantage that even the most necessarily biased observers, namely the Red Bull Racing pit wall, suggested he surrender the place as per sporting convention, but Verstappen decided against remedial action.
Vettel wasn’t happy.
“Move! Move, for f**k sake!” he shouted over team radio, hoping race control would hear his frustration and right the wrong. “He’s just backing me off into Ricciardo!”
Whether Verstappen’s intention or not, Ricciardo found himself close enough to launch an attack on the Ferrari at turn four, resulting in a collision when Vettel appeared to move in the braking zone.
Attacked from behind and faced with a stubborn Verstappen ahead, the German went into meltdown. “You know what, here is a message for Charlie [Whiting, race director]: f**k off! Honestly, f**k off!”
Immediately after the race Verstappen had five seconds added to his time for illegally gaining an advantage over Vettel, promoting the Ferrari to third and Ricciardo to fourth.
But troubled brewed while Vettel celebrated the delivery of natural justice from the podium.
“Seb did what everyone’s been complaining about lately – moving under braking,” Ricciardo said aggrievedly.
“I won the chess match, and then he’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve screwed up, now I’m going to try and repair my mistake’. For me that’s not right.”
Moving in the braking zone has been one of F1’s hot button issues in recent months after a number of borderline defensive manoeuvres executed by Verstappen raised the ire of many a senior driver, including Vettel, who was among the Dutchman’s most vocal critics.
The stewards took up the case and made the call. Vettel had ten seconds added to his race time, demoting him to fifth and promoting Ricciardo and Verstappen to third and fourth.
Maurizio Arrivabene, earlier the voice of reason on Vettel’s team radio when the German had lashed out at Whiting, was inconsolable.
“We gained a podium on the track and they removed it with their bureaucracy – fantastic,” he fumed.
But the third-to-fifth-placed drivers didn’t have a monopoly on controversy in Mexico City. Even second place-getter Nico Rosberg had an awkwardly timed barb to throw into the mix.
“How does he get away with that?” Rosberg cheekily exclaimed in his post-race interview with Sky Sports F1 while apparently watching a replay of Hamilton cutting the first turn – though he almost immediately refused to own his commentary. Ricciardo was on the same page.
“I didn’t understand the start – how you can be leading the race, defend, lock your wheels and go off track, and still stay in the lead,” he told Sky Sports F1.
“[Max] got a penalty, so I don’t know what was that different with his move and Lewis’.”
Hamilton of course received no reprimand for his first-lap excursion, and a safety car later that lap neutralised the debate.
Just as Vettel’s criticism of Max Verstappen helped trigger the FIA’s outlawing of braking-zone defending, so too did drivers playing fast and loose with track limits become an issue in the lead up to Mexico.
In this context Ecclestone somewhat disingenuously suggested building walls around the track edges, so frustratingly frequent were the drivers gaining advantages in the style Hamilton and Verstappen had done this weekend.
The cumulative effect is to reveal a grid of drivers and a broader sport in disarray over sporting standards. While some elder statesmen have proclaimed for months that gentlemen’s agreements on defensive driving have for years been sufficient, one has now been quick to throw the guidelines out of the cockpit in a fit of unedifying rage.
Likewise drivers who have long proclaimed a desire for hard and fair racing have been exposed, not unsurprisingly, as having little regard for rules as basic as those that dictate where the racing circuit starts and ends.
The result of it all is the embarrassing he-said-she-said finger pointing that unravelled at the end of the Mexican Grand Prix.
Though it may have provided some political titillation, what the dying moments of the Mexican Grand Prix really illustrated was just how unsporting Formula One’s sportsmen can be.
Follow @MichaelLamonato on Twitter