Max Verstappen took an impressive win at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after leapfrogging skittish polesitter Lando Norris at the start to keep his title hopes mathematically alive.
The win puts Verstappen 42 points behind Norris, but just 12 points behind Oscar Piastri, whose second-place position in the championship took another blow after the Australian finished in fourth place.
Norris responded well to the lights, but was too eager to try to cover Verstappen to his inside. The title leader cut aggressively to the left, but missed his braking point and sailed into the exit zone.
Verstappen cut through with ease – Norris came dangerously close to hitting him as he regained consciousness – and in the melee George Russell beat the McLaren at Turn 4 to take second place.
The race, the first dry session since Thursday’s practice, entered a management phase, with no driver pushing their tires too hard to avoid debilitating graining and achieving a one-stop strategy.
Russell was the first mover in the podium battle. The Briton was on the attack against Verstappen early on, but reported on lap 14 that the steering problem that damaged his qualifying performance had recurred.
His race then became a defensive race to keep Norris at bay for second place, and he retired on lap 18 to switch from mediums to hards for that purpose.
Norris stayed outside to take advantage of the new fresh air in front of him and put his foot down to minimize the already weak undercut effect. When he returned on lap 22, he came back just 2.5 seconds behind his compatriot.
The small tire offset was magnified by Russell pushing hard and early to catch Verstappen after the Dutchman’s stop, giving his rubber extra life. Combined with Russell’s steering problem, Norris gained a significant pace advantage at the end of the race.
The McLaren engaged the Mercedes car’s gearbox on lap 33. Russell radioed that he wouldn’t be fighting hard to keep his place and maintain a place on the podium – despite having a 14-second lead over fourth.
The move, down the straight, was an easy slipstream pass, putting Norris into first place on lap 34.
He had 4.9 seconds to close on Verstappen with 16 laps to go and two laps later he set the fastest lap of the race in a statement of intent, but Verstappen, who pitted on lap 25 and whose tires were both fresher and underused, was up to the challenge. He reclaimed the fastest lap and gradually opened up the gap to claim his sixth win of the season.
“Normally the race is always tough for us,” he said. “Normally we’re not that great on the tires, but today it seemed like we had that under control a little more and I could push a little more.
“I was able to stay out a bit long and actually split the race in half. That definitely helped a lot.
“Our car worked quite well, much more to my liking, and in the end there was quite a gap.”
Norris was told to take off and coast aggressively in the closing laps, extending his gap to 20.7 seconds and keeping him just ahead of Russell in third place.
“I let Max win by letting him go,” he joked about the start. “I just braked too late. It was my F-up.
“It wasn’t my best performance, but if the guy wins by 20, it’s because he just did better and they’re a little bit faster.”
Russell finished a compromised but ultimately comfortable third place, helped in part by teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who provided a bulwark for the front runners late in the race.
“It was really hard,” he said. “Not a great race from the outside, but to be on the podium here is probably the maximum 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 flag at the end of lap 2 during an early virtual safety car.
The Italian rookie did not stop again and climbed all the way to fourth place as others made their stops, putting him in a perfect position to play a strong defensive game in favor of the ailing Russell of the attacking Piastri.
Piastri had lost touch with the leaders on the first lap when an errant Liam Lawson locked up at the first corner and attacked 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, causing him to fall backwards.
The Australian eventually came back through Hadjar when he reacted quicker to a brief virtual safety car on lap 16, but not before Charles Leclerc, who showed much improved pace in the dry, cut through them both.
An early stop, on lap 21, put him ahead of Leclerc, but he didn’t have the pace to pass the wily and hard-defending Antonelli – although a 5-second penalty for the Italian promoted Piastri to fourth after the flag.
Piastri’s fourth place cost him a further six points from title leader Norris, whose lead is now 30 points and will be eliminated at the penultimate round in Qatar next weekend.
Leclerc finished sixth and just 0.19 seconds behind the penalized Antonelli. His Ferrari was much more competitive in dry conditions than during wet qualifying.
Carlos Sainz finished seventh, having finished a lofty third on the grid, emerging first among the midfielders.
Despite a strong start, Isack Hadjar returned to his starting position in eighth place, ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and Lewis Hamilton, who both started on the hard track and switched to the mediums to score points, two and nine places higher respectively.
RESULTS
#Verstappen #wins #Vegas #close #gap #title #race #RACER