Max Verstappen is still technically in it to win it in the chase for the Formula One drivers’ championship.
Verstappen kept his “drive for five” consecutive titles alive Saturday with a commanding victory at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
His odds increased greatly overnight as, great googly moogly, McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were both disqualified for failing a post-race inspection due to excessive wear on the skid of their cars.
That promoted Mercedes drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli to second and third on the podium — metaphorically speaking, of course, as Antonelli didn’t actually get to stand on the podium and spray the champagne.
It was Verstappen’s 69th career victory as his luck continued on the famous Las Vegas Strip. The Red Bull driver won the inaugural race in 2023 and finished fifth last year when he clinched his fourth straight world championship.
Verstappen started second on the grid with points leader Norris right next to him on pole position. Norris made a mistake right after the start as he swooped over to cover Verstappen and overshot the turn heading into the first corner. That unforced error allowed not only Verstappen but also Russell to take advantage as the McLaren dropped to third.
“I just braked too late,” a brutally honest Norris said on the Sky Sports broadcast. “It was my (expletive) up.”
It wasn’t until Lap 35 that Norris was finally able to overtake Russell and chase down Verstappen for the lead, with a roughly five-second gap between them.
That gap turned into a chasm through the final 15 laps, though, as Norris appeared to be driving cautiously, while Verstappen turned on the jets to the finish line, winning by 20.741 seconds.
Was Norris low on fuel, or did the team already know about the plank issue? Probably not the latter, considering Piastri wasn’t told to ease up.
It’s still an advantage for Norris as he’s leaving Las Vegas with a 24-point lead over McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri and Verstappen, who are now level in second place in the standings.
With a maximum of 58 points up for grabs over the final two races and one sprint, Verstappen might have the luck of Nick Pappagiorgio in Vegas, but will that carry over to Qatar and Abu Dhabi? Fate might not be in his hands.
Regardless, it’s amazing to see Verstappen in the hunt. Rewind to the Hungarian Grand Prix in early August, when Verstappen was 97 points behind Piastri. Since then, Verstappen has finished on the podium in eight straight races, with four wins along the way to boot.
It’s also crazy that Verstappen is single-handedly keeping Red Bull in third place in the constructors’ championship. It might not mean much to Verstappen, but the extra prize money certainly does to the bean counters back at team HQ in Milton Keynes.
Norris remains the favourite to win his first world championship, even after Vegas. The double DQ sort of helped Norris in a sense, as it prevented Piastri from tightening the gap.
It might also twist McLaren’s arm to ignore the current “Papaya rules” allowing their drivers to race each other and instead favour Norris down the stretch with Verstappen lurking in the mix. (Cue to conspiracy theories that the team was already favouring Norris.)
Things were looking great for Norris on Friday as he qualified on pole position for the seventh time this season and third in a row with a flying lap that was almost a full second faster than anyone else until a late slide during the final sector. Even with the snap of oversteer, Norris still crossed the line .323 seconds faster than Verstappen, which even surprised the pole-sitter himself.
“No one else got a lap or what?” Norris said on the team radio to race engineering director Will Joseph.
It was also a milestone weekend for Norris as he became the first driver to compete in his first 150 GPs with the same team and also tied David Coulthard for the most starts with McLaren. Although Norris just turned 26 earlier this month, let’s not forget this is his seventh season with the team, and his loyalty has been rewarded with a world championship-worthy car.
“It’s crazy, it’s a big number, matching DC for the number of races with McLaren. Qatar will be 151 so — I don’t know what the word would be — the most-racingest driver for McLaren?” Norris told reporters earlier in the week.
He added: “That’s something I am pretty proud of, it is quite an achievement, 150 in F1, this is my dream. It’s been my dream since I was a kid. To get that far is pretty incredible and time certainly flies.”
He also shared in a recent interview the influence that Sebastian Vettel has had on his career. Norris said the four-time world champion was someone he grew up watching as a kid (now that should make you feel old) and is “always down to have a chat, have a laugh, have a coffee, whatever it may be.”
Funny that Piastri’s manager is Mark Webber, who was Vettel’s Red Bull teammate and on-track adversary. The Vettel-Webber rivalry reached its boiling point in 2013 when Vettel ignored team orders and overtook Webber for the lead en route to victory as “multi 21, Seb” entered F1 lore.
A Vettel versus Webber proxy war wasn’t on my bingo card at the start of the season.
Piastri might have felt like he was at Bally’s, as he was pinballed by Liam Lawson when the Racing Bulls driver locked up through turn one on the opening lap.
Fortunately, Piastri didn’t sustain damage — although how Lawson escaped without a penalty is a mystery other than chalking it up as a Lap 1 incident.
Piastri recovered but never seemed to find his footing on the low-grip track as he languished behind Antonelli, who produced a mega drive after starting 17th on the grid.
It’s not that Piastri has been awful, but he’s only had one podium finish over the past seven races, which, simply put, isn’t championship material.
Although no fault of his own, the added DQ doesn’t help either.
It’s been a career year for Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari for all the wrong reasons.
The seven-time world champion qualified last, marking the first time Hamilton was the slowest on outright pace for a race in his illustrious career.
Hamilton also became the slowest Ferrari driver in qualifying since Giancarlo Fisichella at the 2009 Abu Dhabi GP. Oof.
The 40-year-old holds a dubious team record as well as the driver who has gone the longest since making his Ferrari debut without a GP podium at 20 races (and counting). Hamilton has never gone a full season without scoring at least one podium, with his most recent coming one year ago in Vegas, when he finished runner-up to then-Mercedes teammate Russell.
Some miscommunication, an all-too-familiar refrain at Ferrari, hampered Hamilton on his final flying lap during Friday’s qualifying as his team informed him too late that he could carry on after crossing the line just before the buzzer.
Hamilton was promoted to 19th with Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda starting from the pit lane, and he weaved through the pileup carnage on the opening lap to swoop into 12th. He continued to climb, finishing ninth to pick up two points.
Meanwhile, Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc said on the team radio he was driving “like an animal” as he came in fourth following the double DQ for McLaren.
It’s not a good sign when Ferrari executive chairman John Elkann publicly scolded both drivers to “focus on driving and talk less” — something that could have been addressed privately — after a double DNF in Brazil two weeks ago. Maybe he was trying to motivate them?
• We say this every year, but you’ve got to love the Sphere.
• As a bonus, Terry Crews driving a pink Lego Cadillac is something that could happen only in Vegas.
• Verstappen’s victory snapped a streak as pole-sitters had won seven consecutive races, one shy of the record. Fear not, 1976, your record of eight straight is safe for now.
• McLaren’s loss was Mercedes’s gain as the team scored its second double-podium finish of the season. Antonelli’s jump at the start that led to a five-second time penalty was barely noticeable, but it’s one of those zero-tolerance rules that the rookie driver will learn from. The 19-year-old pitted early to dump the soft tires and rode the hard set through to the end, pushing enough that even with the penalty applied post-race, he finished .190 of a second ahead of Leclerc. As it turned out, that helped him achieve an impressive second straight podium result (again, metaphorically speaking).
• Canadian driver Lance Stroll had gone the entire season without a retirement until Saturday night. It wasn’t his fault, though. Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto bowled right into the Aston Martin heading into the first turn of the opening lap, striking them both out of the race.