A chaotic weekend in Las Vegas; tough results for McLaren, whilst Verstappen had a strong weekend.
- Cassandra Nicholls
- Nov 27
- 3 min read
The weekend in Vegas is always a glamourous weekend. With stars like Cynthia Erivo and Beyonce out and about, there was plenty going on. There was even a Cadillac car built entirely out of lego for the top 3 drivers.
For McLaren, especially Lando Norris this was a do or don’t weekend. Being he was leading the championship, he needed a strong result, and given he started on pole position, it was going to be good.
For the race though, the win went to Max Verstappen. He drove a brilliant race with lots of first lap drama, and minor threats from other drivers on track. This included George Russell who at one point was well under a second to Verstappen. Russell would eventually finish in P3, after being overtaken by a faster Lando Norris. Norris had a good weekend to manage a P2, but with issues regarding fuel loads and more going on, it wouldn’t last long.
Oscar Piastri was P4 (P5 until after the checkered flag), and realistically he needed a strong result than what he had, but other than that he drove great. He really needed to be able to get past Antonelli, but unfortunately an early pitstop really benefit the young Mercedes driver who initially finished P4, but a 5 second penalty prevented that.
The Ferrari pairing had a difficult qualifying, with Lewis Hamilton forced to settle for P20 with the wet weather drama during the qualifying, whilst Charles Leclerc managed to get to P9. The two of them however had a dramatically better race with Hamilton getting into the top 10 from P19 and Leclerc also maintain his top ten spot. Hamilton finished in P10 (before disqualifications) and Leclerc finished P6.
The race result however was quickly forced to change due a double team disqualification. McLaren were found post-race to have plank wear issues, which automatically results in a disqualification. It did take the FIA about 2 hours to make a decision regarding the result, but in most cases, it is a simple DSQ. So, both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were out of the results only by a few millimetres.
This meant that the drivers below automatically got two position promotions. George Russel finished P2, Kimi Antonelli finished P3, Charles Leclerc finished P4, Carlos Sainz finished P5, Isack Hadjar finished P6, Nico Hulkenberg finished P7, Lewis Hamilton finished P8.
This ultimately meant that the two drivers who initially missed out on points were able to get double points. This was the Haas pairing who finished P9 with Ollie Bearman and P10 with Esteban Ocon.
We had multiple DNF results, including Lance Stroll and Gabriel Bortoleto due to a first lap crash. It was an unfortunate result for both, given Stroll had managed to start P12. The other DNF due to a simple error and lack of radio connection was Alex Albon. It was going to be near impossible to continue the race given crashing into Hamilton and not being able to be in contact with his engineer.
Alpines Franco Colapinto and Racing Bulls Liam Lawson were unfortunately a lap down on the rest of the field and finished in P15 and P14. Lawson had a great qualifying session, managing to make it to Q3, and get a good starting position in P6. Colapinto was able to make it through to Q2 and start in P15.
Your remaining field included Fernando Alonso in P11, Yuki Tsunoda in P12 and Pierre Gasly in P13. These three had quite a quiet weekend with very little going on for them, but they drove a great race and managed to maintain track position.
We return this weekend to the desert for the Qatar Grand Prix. With Norris only 24 points ahead of Piastri and Verstappen (390 to 366), it is going to be interesting. We also have a sprint race, which means up to an extra 8 points are up for grabs.
🙌