For all the sound and fury of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Lando Norris is refusing to get excited about the prospect of putting one hand on a first drivers’ championship trophy in Sin City.
Norris leads his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri by 24 points in the title race and Max Verstappen by 49 with a maximum of only 83 on the table over the three remaining meetings. But with the 26-year-old Briton having wrought an extraordinary comeback from 34 points behind Piastri after August’s Dutch Grand Prix, he is determined to focus on executing with the clinical calm that has put him into the lead in the standings, not the potential outcome of the race.
“It can easily just go the opposite way again as much as I don’t want it to,” he said. “That’s racing, you know. You can also have luck. You can also be unlucky. Whatever it may be. There’s really no point getting excited or thinking about it. I still do see it as something that’s quite distant.”
Norris has found his best form at a crucial juncture – having struggled with the car in the opening half of the season – at the same time as Piastri has lost the controlled, almost flawless ease that had for so long made him appear to be a champion in waiting. Norris notably kept a remarkable level of equanimity throughout, insisting even in the face of setbacks – such as his retirement from the Dutch GP – that he would stick to his gameplan, work each session with the same relentless attention to detail and it has paid off.
All the while McLaren have gone to no little effort to try and maintain a level playing field for their two drivers and it has at times been something of a torturous process, most notably at Monza when the team instructed Piastri to cede second place to Norris after he had lost the spot to his teammate through a slow pit stop. Some fans did not take well to what was considered was McLaren unnecessarily manipulating their drivers.
Norris has won the last two races in Mexico and Brazil and was booed on the podium at both, leaving him unmoved. “When you’re on top, a lot of people want to bring you down. They don’t want to see you winning. I see it as a good thing,” he said.
“It just makes me laugh. When I was on the podium in Brazil, I really loved it. It was quite enjoyable. You finally feel like you’re doing something right.
“I don’t mind, as long as I win. As long as I feel like I’m doing it the correct way, which I feel like I am, as long as I feel like I’m putting effort into being who I am and those kinds of things, then I’m not too fussed about the rest of it.”
Vegas meanwhile must be mastered and it is not a track suited to the McLaren. It shares characteristics with Canada and Baku: low downforce, cool temperatures and low grip. They are the only two circuits this season where McLaren have failed to claim at least one podium place and Norris was circumspect once more about their chances this weekend. Yet his task in the short term is simple: finish in front of Piastri and the points he needs will come.
after newsletter promotion
Charles Leclerc topped the times for Ferrari in first practice on what was still a dusty and very low-grip surface. Alex Albon was second for Williams with Verstappen fourth, Norris sixth and Piastri eighth. In the more representative night running of FP2, Norris was quickest from the Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli with Piastri 14th, however the session lost almost all of the final 20 minutes of running to check a reported loose manhole cover at turn 17.
The issue is taken seriously on a street circuit where, at the first Las Vegas GP held in 2023, a loose drain cover smashed into Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari, severely damaging it and causing the session to be ended.
While in Las Vegas Mercedes confirmed their team principal, Toto Wolff, has sold a 15% stake in his holding company, representing a 5% share in the team, to the American billionaire George Kurtz. Kurtz is the CEO and founder of the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. Wolff will remain as team principal and could earn as much as £230m from the sale, with Mercedes having been valued at £4.57bn, a record for an F1 team.
