Norris has ‘less to lose’ in drivers title showdown as McLaren torches team orders: Las Vegas Burning Questions

When Formula 1 decided to dip its hand into its own pocket to stand up the Las Vegas Grand Prix, it could never have dreamt that in just its second season it would host a championship decider.

Last year’s inaugural race was the deadest of all the rubbers, with Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing having comfortably tied up both titles with races to spare.

But this year both fights are still live.

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Verstappen is on course to win his fourth championship at a canter, but mid-season struggles mean he’s only just now reached match point — and he’ll have to work to seal the deal this weekend too, needing to beat Lando Norris on track to ensure he gets it done.

But the constructors championship can’t be settled here. Instead the Strip will host the latest chapter in an absorbing three-team fight for pride and prize money as Formula 1 embarks on the first leg of its final triple-header of 2024.

F1 will get the best of both worlds — talk about an each-way bet.

PIT TALK PODCAST: F1’s follow-up visit to its premier Las Vegas Grand Prix comes with title permutations, with Max Verstappen on the brink of sealing a fourth championship, while Ferrari is targeting big gains on McLaren at the top of the teams standings.

WILL VERSTAPPEN CLAIM HIS FOURTH SUCCESSIVE CHAMPIONSHIP?

The answer is yes, but can he do it this weekend?

The São Paulo Grand Prix turned Norris’s unlikely championship challenge into a near impossibility. Despite starting the monsoonal race from pole, mistakes off the line, at the pit stops and at the restart dropped the Briton to sixth at the flag.

Verstappen put in a breathtakingly dominant performance, getting past 14 cars to claim a 19.5-second victory.

It put the Dutchman 62 points clear of Norris with three rounds to go.

This weekend the magic number is 60. Just 60 points will remain after Las Vegas, which means if he can prevent Norris from outscoring him by more than two points, a fourth consecutive title will be his.

Verstappen’s route to the championship

Verstappen will win the championship if:

– he finishes ahead of Norris;

– he finishes third with the fastest lap behind Norris in second;

– he finishes fourth with the fastest lap behind Norris in third;

– he finishes one place behind Norris, who is fourth or lower without the fastest lap;

– Norris finishes ninth without the fastest lap or lower; or

– Norris fails to finish.

If the margin lands exactly on 60 points on Saturday night, Verstappen will be declared the winner on countback due to his unmatchable eight victories this season.

“It looks a bit better now in the championship, but we’ll see this weekend,” Verstappen hedged. “We have good hopes to be competitive, but I don’t know how competitive.

“I do feel that even in Brazil in the dry we were quite decent — finally again — in race pace. This of course is a completely different track with completely different temperatures, but I just hope we can continue that momentum a bit.”

Norris’s route to Qatar

Norris’s path to extending the title race to the penultimate round of the season is narrower and more complicated.

Norris can guarantee the title will go to Qatar if:

– he wins the race;

– he and Verstappen finish second and third and Verstappen does not set the fastest lap;

– he and Verstappen finish third and fourth and Verstappen does not set the fastest lap;

– he finishes between fourth and eighth and at least two places ahead of Verstappen;

– he finishes between fourth and eighth with the fastest lap and at least one place ahead of Verstappen; or

– he finishes ninth with the fastest lap and Verstappen fails to score.

“It’s a tough one,” Norris said. “I know the position I’m in now, and probably I have less to lose.

“But it doesn’t change my approach. My approach has been correct. My approach has been the right approach for the last few weekends. I’ve been performing well. I’ve been doing a good job.

“From my side I need to not change anything, but I think I can probably just go out and enjoy a little bit more.”

One thing is for certain: Oscar Piastri has been freed from the shackles of team orders — short of a Norris title miracle.

“The chance for the driver championship now is obviously very, very slim,” Piastri said. “In certain circumstances, yes, I will help, but they’re pretty specific circumstances now.

“I’m free to qualify as best as I can and race as best as I can.”

IS THIS FERRARI’S BIG CHANCE TO CLOSE DOWN McLAREN?

The constructors championship, on the other hand, is still very much alive, with McLaren hoping to claim its first teams title since 1998.

The team enjoyed a 36-point lead over Ferrari, but with three rounds remaining there are still three teams in the hunt.

Constructors championship after round 21

1. McLaren: 593 points

2. Ferrari: 557 points

3. Red Bull Racing: 544 points

And the next two races of this triple-header will be decisive.

The next round in Qatar is a McLaren track. It’s the only circuit the team won at last year — albeit in a sprint — and on paper its high-speed layout suits the car perfectly.

This weekend, however, should be all about Ferrari.

The Las Vegas Strip Circuit bears strong resemblance to all the tracks the Scuderia has done well at in the second half of the season.

It places a strong emphasis on straight-line speed and requires a minimum downforce configuration — like Monza, where Charles Leclerc won from the second row.

But it also comprises slower, more twisty section through which the driver must live with a lack of grip — like Azerbaijan, where Leclerc started on pole and lost out only after a brutal Oscar Piastri overtake.

Last year Ferrari also excelled here, qualifying first and second — though Carlos Sainz started 12th with an engine penalty following the water valve cover catastrophe from practice.

Leclerc would have won the race from front-row starter Verstappen had it not been for a poorly timed safety car — ironically caused by Verstappen’s crash with George Russell.

“I think looking at the layout of the track you would say yes, Ferrari should be competitive or at least in the mix,” Sainz said.

But there is one potentially crucial caveat.

While last year’s strong performance did come during Ferrari’s late renaissance, the team also benefited from what had been a season-long weakness: terrible tyre wear.

The cool conditions overnight played to Ferrari’s strengths. The race took place with air and track temperature at 18°C; for reference even the sopping-wet Interlagos track last time out reached a peak temperature of 31°C.

The forecast is for even cooler weather this Saturday night, when the forecast low is 7°C.

But this year Ferrari doesn’t have the same tyre wear issue. In fact it has the opposite — the SF-24 is very gentle on its tyres.

“When you feel the temperatures and you know how much we struggle sometimes switching on the tyres this year and everything else, then definitely not [a strong track],” Sainz added.

“So there [are] two factors. We’ll see how they clash with each other and who performs better this weekend.”

It’s critically important Ferrari does perform in Las Vegas to at least neutralise the significant swag of points McLaren is expected to score in Qatar last week.

Without a big performance, it’ll be left playing a defensive game ahead of Red Bull Racing come Abu Dhabi.

CAN SERGIO PÉREZ MAKE THE MOST OF HIS LAST CHANCE?

If we’re talking about form as a predictor for Las Vegas, surprisingly we must consider Sergio Pérez.

Pérez has had a dreadful season, but Las Vegas could see a series of positive factors combine in his favour.

The first is that last year he had a genuinely strong race. Though he started a typically underwhelming 11th, he raced his way into podium contention and could have won had he carried a car set-up with better straight-line speed rather than extra downforce.

The second is that one of his few good races this year was the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the closest analogue to Las Vegas.

Baku is the only venue all year at which Pérez has outqualified Verstappen. He needed the Dutchman to make a set-up mistake in the depths of Red Bull Racing’s performance crisis to do it, but that should take nothing away from the Mexican, who had the pace in the race to challenge for victory.

Unfortunately his afternoon ended in a needless 50-50 crash with Sainz that left him scoreless and still searching for his first intrateam victory of the season.

The common ground between these venues is of course that they’re all street tracks, around which Pérez has usually been at his strongest.

But there’s also another reason to think Pérez might be set for a better weekend.

For the first time since the Singapore Grand Prix he’ll be using the same specification car as Verstappen, having missed out in particular on the important floor upgrade his teammate got in Austin last month.

The team doesn’t believe the difference in specifications was large enough to account for Pérez’s qualifying deficits, but the floor is extremely influential in the behaviour of the car. If you were looking for an excuse, it’s a reasonable one.

But is also means Pérez now has nowhere to hide. With an identical car to Verstappen — which he’s had most of the year, but nonetheless — there’ll be no explaining away ongoing bad form.

Red Bull Racing still wants to win the constructors championship. With 49 points between it and McLaren, it’ll need both cars firing on all cylinders to have a chance.

“I think we need a couple of one-twos from now until the end of the year,” Pérez said, setting expectations extremely high. “That will be the main objective for the rest of the year, to really try to be strong in the coming races.”

Few expect Pérez to still be in his seat next year, but if he really could pull off three consecutive one-two finishes, perhaps it would change the narrative around his flagging career.

WILL F1’S NEW RACE DIRECTOR SURVIVE THE SPORT’S STERNEST TEST?

The F1-FIA relationship took several turns for the worse in the break between races, starting with the Grand Prix Drivers Association releasing a strongly worded open letter to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem and ending with race director Niels Wittich suddenly getting the sack for reasons unknown.

The GPDA’s letter came in response to Verstappen and Leclerc being punished for swearing in press conferences, which was the final straw for the drivers among various grievances with the way the governing body manages the sport.

In particular they’ve become frustrated with the way they say they’ve been frozen out of the decision-making process

As opposed the collaborative approach fostered by previous long-time race director Charlie Whiting, Kevin Magnussen described it as “a lot of us against them”.

This is the background against which news of Wittich’s surprise sacking rippled through the paddock.

Speaking in the pre-event press conference, GPDA director George Russell spoke expansively about the drivers’ concerns about the direction of the FIA, launching yet more precision strikes against Ben Sulayem following the collective letter.

“I’m not too sure [if the drivers have confidence in FIA leadership], to be honest,” he said. “We recognise everybody’s working as hard as they can to do the best job possible.

“There is obviously a huge amount of change within the FIA quite regularly, so it’s clearly not the most stable of places, and maybe that’s why it’s been a bit challenging to get some of the changes that we’ve wanted implemented.

“I think if we feel that we’re being listened to and some of the changes that we are experiencing, requesting, are implemented — because ultimately we’re only doing it for the benefit of the sport — then maybe our confidence will increase.

“I think there’s a number of drivers who feel probably a bit fed up with the whole situation, and it only seems to be going in, to a degree, the wrong direction.”

Russell said Wittich’s shock dismissal was only further confirmation of the drivers’ concerns, with the incoming Rui Marques, formerly in charge of Formula 2 and Formula 3, set to be thrown unnecessarily into the deep end.

“I think the departure of Niels is also a prime example of not being a part of these conversations,” he said.

“Sometimes just hiring and firing is not the solution. You need to work together to improve the problem.

“It’s a hell of a lot of pressure now onto the new race director.

“Every time there is a change, you have to take one step back before you make the two steps forwards.”

There could be no bigger test of a race director than Las Vegas.

Street tracks are always harder to manage given their location in the middle of a living, breathing city. Disruptions are always far more likely, requiring more active, interventionist management from race control.

Just remember how first practice went at this track last year for an extreme but indicative example.

Marques will also be dropped directly into the final throes of two title battles, and while there’s little heat in the drivers championship, McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing are fighting just as hard off the track as they are on it to try to gain any advantage in the teams championship.

Just this week the FIA issued a technical directive regarding ride height management in response to Red Bull Racing lobbying that has forced Ferrari and several other teams to change their floors.

It’s far from an ideal situation, and it’s sure to keep the tension between the drivers and the FIA simmering.