From the moment McLaren bolted on its Miami upgrade last May, its competitive trajectory was clear and straight as it carried the team to its first constructors championship since 1998.
Except in Las Vegas.
That Miami upgrade had ensured McLaren never left a racetrack with less than 22 points in its pocket. It had always had at least one car start on the front two rows of the grid, and it would have had a perfect podium streak had it not been for a controversial penalty in Austin and monsoonal conditions in Brazil.
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But then all those runs ended in Las Vegas.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri qualified sixth and eighth and finish sixth and seventh. The team walked away with just 15 points, comfortably its lowest post-upgrade tally of the year.
It never had a sniff of pole position and was never in contention for the podium.
It was a tremendous aberration in what had been a super-consistent season after that game-changing upgrade, and a podium and victory in the following races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi proved it was a one-off.
But unfortunately for McLaren, Las Vegas appears on the calendar every year.
This weekend the team will face its biggest nemesis again, and with every point now crucial to the championship battle, especially for Oscar Piastri, how it reacts could have massive implications on the title outcome.
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WHAT WENT WRONG IN VEGAS?
Last year wasn’t the first time McLaren struggled in Las Vegas. The race has been on the calendar for only two years, but at both events the team was off the pace.
In 2023 the team suffered its first double Q1 elimination in months and just its second for the entire season, with Norris leading Piastri in 16th and 19th respectively.
Norris has a monster crash on the third lap, but while Piastri had a competitive race, he could manage only 10th.
Last year, then, was an improvement, albeit from a very low base, and it highlighted some key weaknesses in the McLaren package.
“Vegas last year was one of the most difficult races,” team principal Andrea Stella said, per Autosport. “We had difficulties with the behaviour of the tyres in qualifying, because we were not fast, and behaviour of the tyres in the race, because we had a lot of graining.
“We also had some aerodynamic issues. When we tried to offload the rear wing [for low drag] we saw that we were losing too much efficiency, and we also had a bit of issues with the set-up of the car in a way trying to compensate for this graining and some of the understeer.”
In other words, the problems were multifaceted.
Graining occurs when the tyre tread heats up but the bulk of the compound remains cold. The surface tears up into little balls of rubber, which reduces the contact patch and reduces grip.
A driver can ‘clean up’ the graining by slowing down to equalise the temperatures, but at a circuit like Vegas, where the race is run at night and the track remains cold, some cars just struggle perpetually to manage the rubber.
One of McLaren’s strengths last year and especially this year is keeping its tyres cool. That’s liability in Las Vegas.
You can combat graining by moving the aerodynamic balance towards the front of the car — that is, removing rear downforce — to work the front tyres more, but as the team discovered last year, this revealed another mismatch between car and circuit.
The layout of the Las Vegas track is fundamentally problematic for McLaren’s design philosophy, which has developed a car that is at its best through long-duration medium-speed corners. It makes it strong at most circuits and unbeatable at a handful of tracks, especially when those tracks are also hot.
Las Vegas, however, features no meaningful fast corners; the bends are either slow or easily flat. It’s at the opposite end of the circuit spectrum to the McLaren car’s happy place.
Piastri’s title challenge laid bare | 01:22
WILL THIS YEAR BE BETTER?
Of course McLaren is in a different place this year relative to 2024.
Its car is more competitive in a raw sense and relative to the rest of the field, and part of the reason for that is the way the team built on last year’s machine to improve its strengths and ameliorate its weaknesses.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix played a significant role in that process.
“The review from Vegas last year gave us a lot of information to try and find a way to improve,” Stella said. “I would say that from a tyre point of view, from an aerodynamic efficiency point of view and from a car set-up point of view, we know in which direction we should change compared to last year.
“Will it be enough to be competitive now? We will only see it in Vegas, but definitely we took actions in response to what we saw last year because certainly the performance wasn’t satisfactory enough.”
McLaren’s global competitiveness should stand it in good stead for a better weekend — but then again, Vegas represents a coming-together of vulnerabilities that the team has exhibited even this year, when it’s done a lot more winning.
The team has struggled less with graining — thanks in part to Pirelli’s new tyre construction in use this year — but the forecast for Vegas is for temperatures to be even chillier than last year, in the low teens rather than nudging 20°C, as it was last year.
That could see those elements cancel each other out, leaving the team exactly where it was last year.
But even if graining isn’t an issue, McLaren’s usual strength on tyre life is unlikely to play a role here given overheating won’t be an issue. Its advantage cooling the car — as seen in Mexico City — also won’t play a role. That will likely allow the other frontrunning teams to close up in the battle for pole and victory.
Aerodynamically this track will likely box McLaren into a corner too.
The car is aerodynamically efficient, which means it can produce a good amount of downforce without loading up on drag. It’s what makes it such a good all-rounder.
But that means it struggles to step down into a really low downforce configuration as effectively as some other cars do.
Think back, for example, to the low-downforce Italian and Azerbaijan grands prix, where Max Verstappen easily beat both McLaren drivers.
Baku in particular is a reasonable analogue for Las Vegas in terms of layout — long straights and slow corners — and to date that was McLaren’s lowest scoring round of the year.
“I’m not really looking forward to it,” Norris said ahead of this weekend. “We’ve been trying to work quite hard on improving those things.
“We know Mercedes were incredibly strong there last year, as well as Red Bull and Ferraris. I think we were the bottom of those four.
“Obviously we’ve improved a lot of things this year, so I’m not going to be too negative about it. I think there’s plenty to look forward to.
“We know Abu Dhabi and Qatar are ones we are looking forward to. Las Vegas just a little bit less, because they’ve been probably some of our weakest races over the last two years, so let’s wait and see.”
“The blame is not all on Oscar!” | 00:36
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE TITLE?
McLaren has long earmarked Qatar and Abu Dhabi as strong circuits for this year’s car. Even if Red Bull Racing returns to top form — and don’t forget how rapid Verstappen was in the race in Brazil — McLaren will still expect at worst to get both cars on the podium at both races.
In Las Vegas, though, the outcome is far less clear.
It’s of no consequence to the constructors championship, which it has already won, but it could be enormously meaningful in the drivers title fight if McLaren’s drivers have to start somewhere in the pack.
Norris leads Piastri by 24 points. The margin is significant because it would allow Norris to finish second to Piastri in all three grands prix and the last sprint without losing the lead.
Change one of those second-place grand prix finishes into a third, however, and he’d be dealing with a little more jeopardy.
Change that third into something even lower and suddenly the title fight looks far more lively.
How likely is that?
Consider that 15 of the 21 races so far this season have been won from pole position, including all the last seven.
That’s not just about the fastest in qualifying being the fastest car in the race.
It’s about how closely matched the field is, making it difficult for any driver in the pack to battle their way forwards.
Starting off the front row means racing in the danger zone, where the risk of race-changing incidents is much higher.
Think back to just the previous race in Brazil, where Piastri started fourth and ended up tangling with Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc in his fightback to second, for which he was controversially penalised.
The proximity of the walls in Las Vegas only amplifies this risk.
McLaren’s history this year starting off the front row is illustrative of what could face its drivers this weekend.
Norris and Piastri have collectively started from the second row 12 times. They gained positions in only six of those races, held their ground in three and lost positions in the remaining three.
They’ve started a race from the third row or lower just eight times between them all season, but only twice have they recovered to a podium finish.
This is what makes this race such a potentially pivotal round for the championship.
We’re unlikely to see an easy McLaren victory, much less a straightforward one-two cruise.
For Piastri this could be a risk. Having suffered two consecutive double-digit swings against him, even a small loss to Norris could be fatal to his title hopes, but there’s a good chance the swing in Las Vegas will be bigger if they’re having to fight their way through the field from a few rows back.
But for that reason Las Vegas is also an opportunity.
If the Australian can return to form — and his speed in the race in Brazil last time out suggested he is back on the pace — circumstances this weekend could give him his last chance to score big against teammate to haul himself back into the fight.
A 10-point swing would be enough to take his championship destiny back into his own hands. Back-to-back victories for the rest of the season would then be enough to get him over the line.
If Qatar and Abu Dhabi are going to be as straightforward as many predict, then Piastri must strike now, when chaos could be on his side.
If Piastri is going to give himself an even chance of winning the championship, Las Vegas could be his last stand.