‘Norris remains strong favourite but Verstappen properly in the game’

The battle for the Formula 1 drivers’ championship is dramatically altered by Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s disqualification from the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

With only two races left and a maximum of 58 points available, Norris had a 30-point lead over his team-mate and was 42 ahead of Max Verstappen at the time of the race.

If Norris had won the Qatari penultimate race for the first time, as long as he did not lose more than five points to Piastri and 17 to Verstappen, he would have won the world championship.

Verstappen’s chances of winning a fifth consecutive world championship were unreal, but they were slim.

Verstappen is now level on points with Norris, but he still technically leads him overall because he only has one win to go. Verstappen is now down to 24 points.

It’s still a big ask to close on Norris with a 12-point lead over the final two races, but Verstappen’s victory in Austin last month meant he had already reduced his deficit to the championship leader, Piastri, by 64 points on four occasions.

Although there will be a sprint race as well as a grand prix, Norris still has the title and has the chance to win it in Qatar this weekend.

But if Norris wins just two points over his closest rival over the Qatar weekend, he will become the world champion on Sunday. The title fight is moved to the following weekend’s Abu Dhabi race if he doesn’t do that.

Briton Norris was quoted as saying in a statement from McLaren following their disqualification: “It’s frustrating to lose so many points. We constantly strive to achieve the best possible level of performance, and we certainly didn’t strike the right balance today.

Nothing I can do will alter that right now, so we’ll shift our focus to Qatar, where we’ll go out and give the best performance possible each time.

Given that he could for the first time win the world title, he said, “I’ve never been in that position before, so I can’t really answer it.

“But no change comes into my mind, despite the fact that that is the opportunity I’m taking.” No, I don’t treat it the same way.

I approach it as though I want to win. I’ll exert every effort to win the race. When you win, it’s undoubtedly much more enjoyable than when you come in second.

“I want to win both the sprint and the long-distance races,” he said. So I’ll try to defeat each of the three.

McLaren’s predicament in Formula One is not uncommon.

Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari was denied entry to the Chinese Grand Prix at the start of the season, as well as the 2023 US Grand Prix, both of which he and Charles Leclerc did at Mercedes.

Last year, George Russell’s Mercedes was disqualified from winning in Belgium because of its underweight, partly because the underfloor wore down more than the team anticipated.

The reason behind it is that teams typically aim to run their cars as low as they can because the aerodynamic downforce they create increases the lap time the faster.

The more accurate the calculation can be and the lessening of the risk the team faces because entering races is somewhat like a guessing game.

The harder it is to choose where to set the ride-height the more data a team has before a race. And Las Vegas was exactly the weekend a team could encounter problems.

No-one participated in the second practice session, which was interrupted by two red flags and involved a lot of team data being collected on a lot of fuel.

That would mean that the teams’ ability to calculate their ride-heights was severely limited.

The cars would then be slower and have less downforce acting on them because final practice and qualifying on Friday were wet, making it less likely that they would wear the floor as much as they would if it were dry.

The long straight along the Strip is steep, and this adds to the mounting floor wear. The track in Las Vegas is also bumpy, and this adds to this.

In their attempt to convince the stewards that there were mitigating factors that needed to be taken into account, as well as the fact that the dreaded “porpoising” or aerodynamic bouncing experienced by many teams when these rules were first introduced in 2022, were a contributing factor in Las Vegas.

According to the stewards’ report, McLaren claimed that the event had more and unexpected porpoising, limited opportunity to test because of the weather on day one, and shorter practice sessions.

Unfortunately, there is no provision in the regulations or precedent for a penalty other than the customary penalty (ie disqualification), so the FIA responded.

The FIA expressed its strong belief that the violation was accidental and that it did not occur intentionally to circumvent the rules.

The infringements on Norris’ cars ranged between 0.07mm and 0.12mm, and Piastri’s were between 0.04mm and 0.26mm. However, regardless of how infinitesimal the infraction, a car either complies or doesn’t, regardless.