This circuit was always going to suit his Red Bull car, but after qualifying third behind the two Mercedes drivers, he still had a job to do and he executed it perfectly.
Of course, Mercedes and Hamilton wanted to win the race after locking out the front row of the grid, but the pace of the two Red Bulls in the race meant it would have been easy for Hamilton to slip to third and lose a further three points to Verstappen.
Mercedes surprised itself with the performance of the car on Saturday, which it put down to finding a performance sweet spot from the soft compound tyres over a single lap.
In Mercedes’ pre-race briefing, the team had envisaged Bottas leading the pack from pole position and giving Hamilton a slipstream down to the first corner.
When Bottas left a large gap on his left-hand side on the run to the first corner, it provided Verstappen with a clear shot at the lead.
“I’d envisaged it differently, naturally, in the sense that if Valtteri had maybe got a better start then I would have tried to get into his tow,” Hamilton said.
If he goes on to win the title in the coming races, overtakes like the one in Mexico City will be the reason why.
“To be honest, most of the things that went wrong, went wrong in that very early part of the race,” Mercedes trackside engineer Andrew Shovlin said.
The track was hotter than it was on Saturday, which meant looking after the rear tyres was key, and that has emerged as a clear strength of the Red Bull in the second half of the season.
Of course, Mercedes was aware of the threat from Perez and that is why it pitted Hamilton just as Perez got into the window where he could attempt the undercut.
By keeping the Red Bull at bay and delaying the defence against the undercut until lap 30, Hamilton made life easier for himself in the second half of the race by minimising the tyre advantage Perez would have in the closing stages.
When Perez finally pitted on lap 41, he rejoined the track on tyres that were 11 laps younger than Hamilton’s, allowing him to close in on the Mercedes and have another go at overtaking.
The thin air at 2,200 metres has two limiting factors on the cars when it comes to overtaking: the wings create less downforce and everything overheats.
The hotter the tyres get, the less grip they offer and the more they slide.
In the past two races, the odds of Verstappen winning the title have shortened dramatically.
But, as is always the case in sport, it’s not over until it’s over.
“I don’t believe in momentum,” Verstappen said.