It wasn't only tyres, though.
McLaren had been keeping a very tight leash on his power unit settings as he sat behind Verstappen - and that had saved him quite a lot of fuel. He could now unleash that as he chased the Ferraris down. Then there was the wind.
"It's tiny details that make the difference between the cars," Norris said. "The wind changed direction and suddenly the car came alive."
So Leclerc - a little off Sainz's pace this weekend, the difference amplified in the race by having to do more lift and coasting to keep the temperatures under control compared to the race leader in clear air - was something of a sitting duck as Norris made his late advance.
His only hope was to hold him off long enough that the McLaren began to overheat. But McLaren hadn’t gone quite as racy as Ferrari on cooling levels - which was quite possibly what won Sainz pole and the race over Norris.
Ferrari was bold in its choices for both power unit and brake cooling here. To the benefit of aero, of course. They were the sort of choices made by a team confident it could run at the front, and with an outside run at the constructors' championship.
Sainz made
clinical use of it all. He lost out to Verstappen at the start, but he was half expecting that. "
This is a low-grip surface," he pointed out, "and the Red Bull tends to start really well on these sorts of surfaces." He sat it out around the outside of the Red Bull into Turn 1 but with the escape route of the grass - which he took, before giving the lead back before they reached Turn 4.
He was irritated, though. Not so much with Verstappen, but because he knew he needed to be in clear air. He'd even hinted at it after setting pole. "It's very important for the cooling of the car and the management of the race to be leading." Especially with a marginal cooling package. So he was determined to get it back as quickly as possible.
The first six laps were run under the safety car (while the mess from the interlocking Yuki Tsunoda/Alex Albon wrecks was cleared). The following four laps were Sainz forcing Verstappen to use up his battery charge staying out of the Ferrari's DRS reach. That done, he pounced from a long way back into lap 9, taking Verstappen - irritated at the empty battery - by surprise.
"I didn't really prepare the move," said Sainz. "I knew I needed to surprise him as he is difficult to pass. I thought I was a bit too far back on the straight but then I was gaining fast in the last 100 metres..."
With the Red Bull battery giving Max no more help, Sainz, with DRS and full deployment just couldn’t resist. "I've been strong on the brakes into Turn 1 all weekend," he related, "so I knew I could do it."
It was a little ragged - he clanked over the Turn 1 apex kerb at an awkward angle and locked up the fronts into the left-hander in the stadium later in the lap - but he was through. Into the valuable clean air. That was the victory won.
On the next lap, Norris made his attack on the Red Bull into Turn 4, got ahead, got forced off, rejoined ahead, only for Verstappen's retaliation three corners later. That allowed Leclerc to pass them both, putting Ferrari 1-2. Just where they'd left off in the US.
With Leclerc spending virtually all of the second stint lifting and coasting, his efforts at reducing the gap to Sainz - which got him to within 1.6s by lap 17 and got Sainz complaining - were called off.
Norris rejoined on his hards five seconds behind Leclerc, with Sainz another eight up the road. On its favoured tyre and with its favoured wind direction, the McLaren was flying - and not as vulnerable as the Ferrari to cooking its brakes. With nine laps to go, trying to maximise his speed out of the final corner so as to give himself a chance against Norris, who was now in DRS range, Leclerc rescued a tank slapper at huge speed, and Norris was through.
All that was left for Leclerc was a second stop for a fresh set of tyres on which to take the race's fastest lap point. For Sainz, the last few laps were a little tense as he monitored his gap to the attacking McLaren but essentially it was under control.
