Verstappen wins in Vegas to close the gap in title race

Max Verstappen took a commanding victory at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after jumping skittish polesitter Lando Norris at the start to keep his title hopes mathematically alive.

The victory puts Verstappen 42 points behind Norris, but only 12 points behind Oscar Piastri whose hold on second in the championship standings took another blow after the Australian tailed home in fourth. (He is now tied with Piastri and 24 points behind Norris following the post-race DQ of the McLarens. -Ed.)

Norris reacted well to the lights but was too eager to try to cover Verstappen to his inside. The title leader chopped aggressively to his left but in doing so missed his braking point and sailed into the run-off zone.

Verstappen sliced through easily – Norris came perilously close to hitting him as he rejoined – and in the melee George Russell beat the McLaren into Turn 4 to pinch second place.

The race, the first dry session since Thursday practice, entered a management phase, with no driver pushing their tires too hard to prevent debilitating graining and achieved a one-stop strategy.

Russell was the first mover in the podium battle. The Briton had been on the offensive against Verstappen early but reported on lap 14 that the steering problem that hurt his qualifying performance had recurred. His race then became a defensive one to keep Norris at bay for second place, and he stopped on lap 18 to switch from mediums to hards in service to that end.

Norris stayed out to benefit from the newly fresh air ahead of him and put his foot down to minimize the already weak undercut effect. When he took his service on lap 22 he rejoined only 2.5s behind his compatriot.

The small tire offset was boosted by Russell pushing hard and early to catch Verstappen after the Dutchman’s stop, taking extra life out of his rubber. Combined with Russell’s steering problem, Norris ended up with a significant pace advantage at the end of the race.

The McLaren locked onto the Mercedes car’s gearbox on lap 33. Russell signaled over radio that he wouldn’t fight hard to retain the place to retain a spot on the podium – despite him holding a 14s advantage to fourth place. The move, down the back straight, was an easy slipstream pass, putting Norris into top spot on lap 34.

He had 4.9s to close to Verstappen with 16 laps remaining and two laps later set the fastest lap of the race as a statement of intent, but Verstappen, who pitted on lap 25 and whose tires were both fresher and underused, was equal to the challenge. He took back the fastest lap and gradually pried open the gap to claim his sixth victory of the season.

“Normally the race is always a tough one for us,” he said. “Normally we are not that great on tires, but today it seemed like we had that a bit more under control and I could push a little bit more. I could stay out a bit long and basically split the race in half. That definitely helped a lot.

“Our car was working pretty well, much more to my liking, and it was at the end quite a decent gap.”

Norris was told to aggressively lift and coast in the final laps, blowing out his deficit to 20.7s and only just keeping him ahead of Russell in third.

“I let Max have a win by letting him go,” he joked about the start. “I just braked too late. It was my F-up.

“It was not my best performance out there, but when the guy wins by 20s, it’s because he’s just done a better job and they’re a bit quicker.”

Russell finished a compromised but ultimately comfortable third, helped in part by teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who was a bulwark to the front-running cars late in the race.

“It was really difficult,” he said. “Not a great race from the outside, but standing here on the podium is probably the maximum we could have achieved.”

Antonelli took the checkered flag a sensational fourth, up from 17th on the grid, after switching from softs to hards at the end of lap 2, during an early virtual safety car. The Italian rookie didn’t stop again, rising all the way into fourth as others took their stops, putting him in a perfect position to play a strong defensive game to the benefit of the ailing Russell from the charging Piastri.

Piastri had become disconnected from the leaders on the first lap, when an errant Liam Lawson locked up into the first corner and barged him, costing the Australian a place not only to the Kiwi but also to his teammate, Isack Hadjar.

Piastri emerged from the contact without damage, but Lawson’s front wing later collapsed, dropping him to the back.

The Australian eventually got back through Hadjar when he reacted more quickly to a brief virtual safety car on lap 16, but not before Charles Leclerc, showing much improved pace in the dry, cut through both of them.

An early stop, on lap 21, undercut him ahead of Leclerc, but he didn’t have the pace to pass the wily and hard-defending Antonelli – though a 5s penalty for the Italian promoted Piastri to fourth after the flag.

Leclerc finished sixth and just 0.19s behind the penalized Antonelli, his Ferrari much more competitive in dry conditions than it had been in wet qualifying.

Carlos Sainz finished seventh, down from a lofty third on the grid and emerging as first among the midfielders.

Despite a strong start, Isack Hadjar returned to his starting position in eighth, ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and Lewis Hamilton, both of whom started on hards and switched to the mediums to score points, up two and nine place respectively.

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