Max Verstappen took a commanding victory at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after leapfrogging finicky pole-sitter Lando Norris at the start to mathematically keep his title hopes alive.
The victory left Verstappen 42 points clear of Norris, but he was only 12 points behind Oscar Piastri, who held on to second place in the championship standings, and was dealt a further blow by the Australian chasing him in fourth place. (He is now tied with Piastri and 24 points behind Norris.) McLaren’s post-race DQ. -Ed.)
Norris reacted well to Wright but was too eager to cover Verstappen inside. The title leader made an aggressive chop to the left, but in doing so missed the braking point and advanced into the run-off zone.
Verstappen sliced easily and Norris almost made contact with Verstappen on his return, but in a melee, George Russell beat the McLaren at Turn 4, putting second place in a pinch.
The race, the first dry session since Thursday’s free practice, entered the management phase, with no drivers pushing the tires too hard to prevent debilitating graining, achieving a one-stop strategy.
Russell was the first to fight for the podium. The British rider was on the offensive against Verstappen from the start, but on lap 14 he reported that the steering problem that had negatively affected his qualifying performance had returned. His race then became a defensive race to keep Norris at bay as he battled for second place, stopping on lap 18 and switching from medium to hard to that end.
Norris stayed out to benefit from the fresh air up front and put his foot down to minimize the already weakening undercut effect. He started service on lap 22 and returned just 2.5 seconds behind his compatriot.
The small tire offset was compounded by Russell pushing hard early to catch Verstappen after the Dutchman stopped, giving Verstappen’s rubber extra life. Combined with Russell’s steering issues, Norris had a significant pace advantage in the final stages of the race.
McLaren locked on to the Mercedes car’s gearbox on lap 33. Despite maintaining a 14-second lead over fourth place, Russell signaled over the radio that he would not fight hard to maintain his podium spot. This move on the back straight was an easy slipstream pass, and Norris emerged into the lead on lap 34.
With 16 laps remaining, he was now 4.9 seconds behind Verstappen, and two laps later he set the fastest lap of the race as a statement of intent, but Verstappen, who pitted on lap 25 and had new tires that had not been used much, matched the challenge. He took back the fastest lap and gradually widened the gap to take his sixth win of the season.
“Normally the races are always tough for us,” he said. “Normally I don’t handle the tires that well, but today it seemed like I had a little more control over it, so I was able to push it a little bit more. I was able to stay a little longer and basically split the race in half, which definitely helped a lot.”
“Our car was working pretty well, much more to my liking, and we were able to build up a pretty decent gap at the end.”
Norris was instructed to lift and coast aggressively on the final lap and blew that gap to 20.7 seconds, just keeping him just ahead of Russell in third place.
“I let Max go and win,” he joked about the start. “I braked too late, I was in F-up.
“That wasn’t my best performance, but the guys won by less than 20 seconds because he just did a better job and they were a little faster.”
With the help of teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who became a bulwark for the leading cars in the closing stages of the race, Russell managed a compromised but ultimately comfortable third place.
“It was really tough,” he said. “It wasn’t a great race from the outside, but to be on the podium here is probably the most we could have achieved.”
Antonelli took the checkered flag in a sensational fourth place from 17th on the grid after switching from soft to hard at the end of the second lap during the early virtual safety car. The Italian rookie was unstoppable again, working his way up to fourth place while others stopped, and was in the perfect position to play strong defense against the rushing Piastri and favoring the ailing Russell.
Piastri was about to be pulled away from the front on the first lap when an errant Liam Lawson locked up in the first corner and cut into him, costing the Australian a place as well as his teammate Isaac Hajar.
Piastri escaped unscathed from the contact, but Lawson’s front wing later collapsed, dropping him into last place.
The Australian reacted quickly to a short virtual safety car on lap 16 to overtake Hajjar and eventually reversed, only for Charles Leclerc, who had significantly improved pace in the dry, to pass them both.
An early stop on lap 21 brought him in front of Leclerc, but he did not have the pace to pass the crafty and well-defended Antonelli, but a five-second penalty against the Italian moved Piastri into fourth place.
Leclerc finished sixth, just 0.19 seconds behind the penalized Antonelli, and his Ferrari was much more competitive in dry conditions than in wet qualifying.
Carlos Sainz finished seventh, moving down from third on the grid to move into first place among midfielders.
Despite a strong start, Izak Hajar returned to the starting position in 8th place, 2nd and 9th respectively ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and Lewis Hamilton, who had started hard and switched to medium to score points.
result
