The Miami Grand Prix was won by Max Verstappen of Red Bull.
Verstappen was cruising to an easy win after passing Leclerc early on but a late safety car brought them together for a re-start with 10 laps to go.
Verstappen broke his challenge after Leclerc strained everything for five laps to get close enough to pass.
The championship lead was cut in half by Verstappen's win.
The race had appeared to be petering out after Verstappen climbed from third on the grid to the lead.
The world champion passed the second car of Carlos Sainz around the outside of Turn One and into Turn Two and then chased down Leclerc before taking the lead at the start of the ninth lap.
Verstappen seemed to be cruising to victory when he took the lead through the pit stops, but a safety car came out after a bizarre crash between McLaren's Lando Norris and Alpha Tauri's Pierre Gasly.
When it appeared that his hopes were gone, Leclerc gave everything he had to try to regain the lead.
He was within a second of Verstappen for five laps after the restart but was always too far away to make a proper lunge for the lead.
Verstappen put his superior pace to good effect to ease out his lead to just over a second, preventing Leclerc from benefiting from the one-second advantage provided by the DRS overtaking aid, and the race was done.
It was Verstappen's second consecutive win, the first time a driver has achieved that this year, and it continues his run of either winning or retiring this year, albeit both retirements coming when he was in second place having lost a fight with Leclerc.
It was an impressive recovery after losing a lot of track time on Friday due to a series of reliability problems that he felt had prevented him from fighting for pole position.
The two title rivals were in a league of their own.
The final podium position was held by Carlos Sainz, despite Perez having the advantage of fresh tyres after Red Bull put him on new medium tyres.
George Russell was the best of the rest and took fifth place, ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
Russell fought his way up from 12th on the grid, running a hard tire at the start and going long. At one point he told the team to keep going and hope for a safety car.
That gave him a cheap pit stop, in which he loses less time to rivals because they are lapping more slowly, and put him on new medium tyres behind Hamilton at the restart, and he used his extra grip to pass the former world.
He had to do the move twice because the first attempt was ruled out for being unfair and he made it after going off track. Russell passed Hamilton into Turn 11 after being told to let him back past.
The strategy has not been kind to me, man, I have lost out twice in three races because of the timing of a safety car, and I am very upset about it.
He and Bonnington discussed the idea of stopping for fresh tires during the safety car period but decided not to because it would mean losing a place to Russell, but that happened anyway, as it always looked likely in the circumstances.
Valtteri Bottas was ahead of them at the restart but slid wide at the last corner and lost out to both Mercedes.
Ocon was able to benefit from a long first stint on the hard tyres and a chance to change under the safety car, while Alonso was punished for colliding with Gasly.
The accident with Gasly happened after the Frenchman touched Alonso.
Gasly ran wide through Turn Eight and was on the radio complaining about a problem with his car when he and Norris came together on the long straight that follows.
There is a two-week break before the Spanish Grand Prix, and Ferrari needs to do something about Red Bull.
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