Lando Norris insists nothing has changed in title fight after Vegas shambles

Lando Norris has said nothing has changed in terms of his focus on sealing his first Formula One world championship after disqualification at the Las Vegas Grand Prix

Lando Norris has insisted nothing has changed in terms of his focus on sealing his first Formula One world championship after both he and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri were disqualified from the Las Vegas Grand Prix, a result that catapulted Red Bull’s Max Verstappen back into contention for the title. McLaren’s team principal, Andrea Stella, has denied the team took “excessive risks” with their car in Las Vegas.

The race in Nevada last weekend was won by Verstappen but Norris took a strong second and Piastri fourth. However, four hours afterwards, following an investigation by the FIA, both were disqualified after the skid blocks on the floor of their cars were found to have been worn down below the 9mm limit defined in the rules.

Verstappen had been 49 points behind Norris going into the meeting but with Norris and Piastri stripped of their points he is now only 24 behind, the same deficit as Piastri, as the season enters its penultimate round in Qatar. Norris can still close out the title here but maintained he felt no extra pressure from Verstappen’s proximity in the title race.

“We’ve treated him as a threat the whole year even when he was a few more points behind,” he said. “We treat him as a threat because we know what he’s capable of, we know what Red Bull is capable of, so therefore nothing changes now because he’s still the threat he’s always been through the whole year.

“There’s no point in trying to treat it any differently because we’ve been doing a good job and I’m very happy with the job we’ve all been doing. We know what areas we need to do better, we know what things we need to improve on. I don’t feel like I had a bad weekend last weekend or we had a bad result, so that’s a good thing.”

Norris’s chances did take a blow in Las Vegas, however. But for the miscalculation, he would have come to Qatar with a 30-point lead over Piastri and 42 over Verstappen, giving him a much greater chance to seal the title and he admitted it had been a blow.

“Of course it hurts,” he said. “There’s a lot of effort that goes into every weekend from everyone, including myself, and it certainly made all that effort feel like it disappeared very quickly. But it’s the same feeling for all of us, the mechanics, the engineers, myself, everyone in McLaren feels let down by what we had as a result.

“ We’re all disappointed but actually I found it quite easy just to move on and have a few days off and come to this weekend.”

Piastri expressed similar feelings but was unequivocal that as things stood he would not make any sacrifices to help Norris in a fight with Verstappen, when asked if he would be prepared to help his teammate. “We’ve had a very brief discussion on it and the answer is no,” he said. “I’m still equal on points with Max and I’ve got a decent shot of still winning it if things go my way, so that’s how we’ll play it.”

With a 24-point lead over his two rivals and 58 on the table with a sprint race this weekend, to clinch it here Norris must outscore them both by two points regardless of where he finishes or by one point if he wins the race on Sunday.

Reacting at length for the first time since Las Vegas, Stella said he did not believe the team had pushed too close to the limit with the ride height of the cars – a factor in improving performance but at the risk of excessive wear to the skid blocks – but that the unexpected bouncing, known as porpoising, of the cars had taken the team by surprise from the very start of the race.

“Based on the data we had acquired in practice, we do not believe we took excessive risks in terms of ride height and we also added a safety margin for qualifying and the race, compared to practice, in terms of clearance to the ground,” he said.

“The specific cause that led to the situation was the unexpected occurrence of extensive porpoising, inducing large vertical oscillations of the car,” said the Italian. “The level of porpoising was exacerbated by the conditions in which the car operated during the race, and it was not anticipated based on what we had seen in practice and based on the predictions of the car operating window in the race.”