McLaren fumble puts both titles at risk; rookies bungle bid to unseat Perez despite quali fail: Talking Pts

“We’ve got to do a deep dive to understand why we’ve been so quick this weekend, because it’s been a real surprise,” George Russell said after taking pole position at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

On a weekend that had been expected to be contested between Ferrari and McLaren, the down-and-out Mercedes team has risen from months of mediocrity to disrupt the party in a turn that’s shocked even the team itself.

It’s not the circuit that particularly suits Mercedes or Russell but rather the conditions. In the frigid late Las Vegas night, when the ambient temperature dropped to just 11°C, the W15’s ordinarily race-destroying tyre overheating problems become a strength, pumping energy into the Pirelli rubber faster and more effectively than any other car.

F1 LAS VEGAS SUNDAY 5PM AEDT | Who will cash in, in Sin City? Watch every lap LIVE in 4K on Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer.

It’s the exact same car trait that powered Ferrari to a one-two qualifying result at this track last year.

Ferrari fixed that characteristic during the off-season to haul itself into championship contention this year.

Ironically it’s that same trait that saw Carlos Sainz beaten to pole by less than 0.1 seconds in Sin City this season.

“The car has been on rails all weekend,” Russell said. “There’s no reason why we can’t [win], to be honest.

“The races we’ve been on pole position we’ve had the pace to win the race.

“Here there are so many unknowns. We’re going to be spending the majority of the race on the hard tyre — not one single driver has used the hard tyre this whole weekend. We know the medium is going to be gaining quite a lot.

“There are a lot of unknowns, but I see no reason why we can’t fight for victory.”

Sainz didn’t expect to be contending for pole, knowing after practice that his Ferrari was much better over a long race stint than a single lap.

Starting from second is therefore a bonus, but it’s potentially also a portent for Russell.

Last year the leading Ferrari car was defeated by the driver who started second on the grid in a more balanced package — Max Verstappen.

Sainz and Ferrari will be hoping the same thing plays out in 2024, this time in the Italian team’s favour — which would bring with it massive implications in the constructors championship.

McLAREN SUFFERS WORST QUALIFYING RESULT OF 2024 AS TITLE HANGS IN THE BALANCE

McLaren picked a bad time to execute its slowest qualifying performance of the year.

Despite having sounded happy with his one-lap pace on Thursday, Norris fumbled to sixth on the grid, having improved on his best Q2 effort by a paltry 0.091 seconds.

Oscar Piastri fared worse, qualifying seventh after having failed to improve on his Q2 time at all.

Taking Norris as the benchmark, McLaren was 0.696 seconds slower than the fastest Mercedes. That equates to 100.75 per cent of the quickest lap.

McLaren’s previous worst result in fully dry conditions was in Saudi Arabia, where it lapped at 100.63 per cent of the pace. It was similarly distant in Austria too. On average this season it’s been lapping at 100.29 per cent.

It’s a massive improvement on the team’s double Q1 knockout late last year, but it was disappointing all the same, with team principal Andrea Stella saying the McLaren car was simply ill-suited to the unusual Las Vegas conditions.

“It’s very cold, very low grip, there’s a requirement to generate very high top speed,” he told Sky Sports. “We have to say that in these conditions we struggle to generate grip consistently.

“Overall I would say the main reason why we are not in the usual position from a qualifying point of view is that the car overall in this configuration in these conditions does not seem to perform very well.”

That’s bad news on both championship fronts.

While the drivers title fight is all but over, Norris hoped at least to take the battle with leader Verstappen one more round, to Qatar. He was favourite to do so too, especially after Red Bull Racing struggled so badly during practice.

But now Verstappen will start one place ahead of Norris. If they finish in those places, the Dutchman will win the title.

Worse, however, is what it means for the constructors championship battle with Ferrari.

Ferrari and McLaren have been neck and neck all weekend, rated similarly over one lap and over the race simulations.

The Italian team, however, took a step ahead in time for qualifying, with Sainz and Charles Leclerc qualifying second and fourth.

Even if Ferrari can’t catch Russell for the lead — though race pace simulations on Thursday suggested the red cars would be much fastest over a stint — it would be fair to assume Leclerc will at least get past Pierre Gasly for third.

Assuming Piastri also gets ahead of Yuki Tsunoda, that would generate a 19-point swing in Ferrari’s favour in the constructors championship.

The gap between McLaren and Ferrari would shrink to just 20 points with 10 rounds remaining.

“Hopefully tomorrow in the race, once you start to have continuous laps and you can generate some tyre temperature, conditions come back to aa more normal window and we can be more competitive,” Stella said.

Last year McLaren was much more competitive in race trim, but with Ferrari having earnt a big head start on the grid, it seems like a matter of how much, not if, the title momentum swings to Maranello.

GRIM HAMILTON RESULT THREATENS TO OVERSHADOW MERCEDES FINALE

Hamilton warned after sweeping both practice sessions on Thursday that the good times mightn’t last.

He was half right.

Mercedes continued performing apace on its most consistently competitive weekend this side of the mid-season break.

Even Hamilton himself was on it, topping Q2 on the way to the pole shootout. He wasn’t a clear favourite, but he was obviously in the mix.

And then everything unravelled.

His first lap was scuppered by a lockup into turn 12, the final corner before the drivers turn left onto the Strip.

His second lap was compromised by a big snap of oversteer through turn 4, sending him off the track. His lap time was deleted, but it wouldn’t have been good enough for anything more than 10th anyway.

It was an epic flop on what was one of Mercedes’s few glorious days this year.

Had Hamilton simply replicated his Q2 time, he would’ve been a competitive third.

“It didn’t work when it mattered,” he said. “I tried. It didn’t come off. I should’ve been on pole.

“At least I’ve got pace, which is a good, showing that over the weekend.

“I think the race is kind of done, and obviously the win is out of the question.”

It’s not just the bad result but the timing of his Q3 struggle.

While Hamilton’s generally strong pace has done much to banish the ill feeling over his nightmare Sao Paulo Grand Prix, the result is the same: way behind his teammate and out of picture for big results.

Ahead of this weekend he admitted that his struggles in Brazil were so bad that he genuinely thought about not turning up to the last three races.

“If this is the last time that I get to perform, it’s a shame it wasn’t great, but [I’m] grateful for you,” Hamilton told his team over radio on the cool-down lap in Interlagos.

In Las Vegas he said: “In the moment that’s how I felt. I didn’t really want to come back after that weekend, but I think that’s only natural.

“It’s frustrating when you have a season like this, which I’m pretty sure I won’t have again, or at least I’ll work towards not having again.

“It wasn’t a great feeling in that moment, but I’m here, I’m standing strong, and I’m going to give it absolutely everything for the last few races.”

There’s no real doubt Hamilton won’t see out the season, but just as it looked like he might’ve been able to end his Mercedes career on some sort of high, the Briton’s head is down again as he scratches away for minor points.

PEREZ FLOPS AGAIN, BUT WOULD-BE REPLACEMENTS STRUGGLE

Sergio Pérez has been knocked out of Q1 six times this season. Max Verstappen has been knocked out of Q1 five times since joining Red Bull Racing in 2016.

And not only is it the sixth time this season Pérez has qualified in the bottom five in 2024, but it’s also the second time he’s fallen at the first hurdle in the last three grands prix.

Four times in the last five races he’s failed to crack the top 10. Since getting his mid-season reprieve he’s more often than not qualified on the bottom half of the grid.

He’s scored eight points in the last five rounds and just 20 since the mid-season break.

It’s not sustainable.

“From a constructors [championship] point of view, we desperately need both cars right up there working as a pair, which we haven’t had,” Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner told F1 TV said in Las Vegas.

“There’s no way we’re going to be able to win the constructors championship without that.”

Despite Pérez’s protestations that he’s secure for 2025, Horner emphasised that all options were open for next season.

“All the drivers that we have under contract we’re very clear on what their contractual situations are,” he said.

“We could, if we so chose, leave it all the way up until [round 1 in] Melbourne next year if we want to because we have drivers under contract.

“But inevitably at the end of the year we’ll sit down and look at all the information that’s available to us.”

But as has been the case all season, Pérez is being saved by his potential replacements failing to fire at key moments.

This weekend both Franco Colapinto and Liam Lawson struggled — though both, notably, outqualified Pérez by making it through to Q2.

Lawson will start only one place up, in 15th, after failing to improve in Q2. More damning, though, is that he was thoroughly outclassed by teammate Tsunoda, who made it all the way to Q3 in seventh.

The Kiwi has been a step behind Tsunoda all weekend. It’s his first visit to Las Vegas and driving in these outlandish conditions, which is a mitigating factor, but considering his good run of form up to now, it’s certainly disappointing.

Franco Colapinto’s day was also mixed. Though he outqualified teammate Alex Albon for the second time in his short career, he binned his car at the end of Q2, leaving his team with a massive rebuilding task ahead of the race.

While it’s also his first time in Las Vegas, the team’s unfortunate run of smashes meant bringing home the car in one piece was the priority. He also crashed out of the Sao Paulo Grand Prix last time out after having crashed out of qualifying for the wet, albeit on both occasions in treacherous conditions that caught out far more experienced drivers.

But just as Colapinto’s big reputation was forged in relatively few races, so too can it be broken by a run of bad results.

Pérez is still heavily tipped to lose his drive, but on a day that could have been a knockout blow for his career, his would-be replacements looked slightly less compelling.

CONTRASTING MIDFIELD FORTUNES FOR ALPINE AND WILLIAMS

It’s a miracle Williams arrived in Las Vegas in fighting shape to begin with, having suffered five massively damaging and expensive crashes in a horror two-race run in the Americas.

Alex Albon suffered two big smashes in Mexico City — in practice and at the start of the race — and another monster smash in qualifying in Sao Paulo that ruled him out of the grand prix.

Colapinto also crashed in qualifying in Brazil, albeit smaller, but made up for it with a violent crash in the wet in the race.

Team boss James Vowles called it unsustainable at the time, and he later told ESPN the damage bill run into the multiple millions of dollars

“Less than US$10 million (A$15.4 million) but more than $3 million ($4.6 million),” he said.

“The sustained damage we had across Mexico and Brazil, I hadn’t experienced anything like that in 25 years of working in the sport — to have five major accidents [in two races].

“That took out five front wings, five floors, five rear wings, three gearboxes, two engines, two chassis — an amount that you just can’t believe.”

But Williams arrived with a healthy complement of spares and both cars in identical specification in Las Vegas and aiming for a good result, having achieved a rare double Q3 appearance here last year.

Instead Alex Albon was knocked out in Q1 and Franco Colapinto crashed his car heavily in Q2.

It was a rookie mistake from the rookie driver, clipping the apex barrier exiting the final chicane. It shattered his front-left suspension and left him a passenger as his car careered into an impact measured at more than 50g with the concrete barrier on the outside of the track.

The team said he required medical checks afterwards due to the force of the crash and said he would need further evaluation before being cleared to race.

It’s an open question whether the damage is too severe to be repaired in time for the grand prix anyway.

It was exactly the result the team didn’t need after such a horror run.

At the other end of the midfield, however, things couldn’t have been going any better for Alpine and leading man Pierre Gasly.

The Frenchman, who was also competitive here last year, was a superb third in qualifying, comfortably his best one-lap result of the year and better than Esteban Ocon’s fourth in Brazil, the team’s previous high watermark in 2024.

Alpine’s double podium in Sao Paulo catapulted it to sixth in the championship with 49 points, three clear of Haas and five clear of RB.

Each of those teams has only one other driver in Q3, in ninth and seventh respectively. Alpine also has Ocon in 11th.

With points so hard to come by for the midfield teams, if Gasly can hold his epic qualifying result, it could just about seal an almost unbelievable sixth for the team that spent so much of the year as one of the slowest in the sport.