The field had rolled back into an uptight silence, all cars lined up with their noses pointed at nothing, their drivers sitting in the heat with their visors down and their thoughts loud, while the marshals punctuated the circuit.
The red flag in Lap 25 totally snapped the race out of its avid trance.
The track, which had been roaring and fighting and bristling with tension a minute earlier, looked suddenly exposed like a party after the music stops.
When the restart came, something strange followed it.
Decline.
All of a sudden, the Mexico Grand Prix lost its teeth.
Lap by lap, the theatre changed melancholically, the field spreading out, and the drivers becoming more cautious, so cautious, there were barely any duels afterwards. What was left were weighted encounters and prudent close-ons.
