Something rather important happened for McLaren and Lando Norris at the end of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. That’s in addition to mathematically losing the world championship to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, which had really gone in the wild Brazilian wetness and the Dutchman’s brilliance there.
This was how Norris lifted his pace on his second set of hard tyres. His delta tracks remarkably close with the stint that Lewis Hamilton produced to such acclaim when behind George Russell as the race’s end approached.
Finally, Norris had got the MCL38 working around its tendency to be “killing the fronts” on low-downforce tracks. He did this by pushing the tyres harder from earlier and at times bullying in oversteer to try and reach the critical tyre temperature window he’d generally not been in before this point.
His out-lap speed compared to his first was almost a second quicker, with the need to treat the rubber gently here even more urgent given the graining severity on the cool surface. He also ignored a McLaren differential settings adjustment around the wind picking up as the stint wore on.
This was cut short by McLaren pitting Norris for softs to successfully chase the fastest lap point. That could yet be critical in its constructors’ fight against Ferrari come the Abu Dhabi finale in two weeks’ time.
“We spent two stints just graining front tyres, and at the third stint, Lando tried something extreme,” explained McLaren team boss Andrea Stella. “And it worked!”
Stella insisted this was an example of Norris’s progress through 2024. That he developed to be “not only more aware, but more capable of using his skills or developing new skills” – per the Italian.
Helping McLaren shed its occasionally severe graining issue when such circumstances arise – something Norris feels has plagued the team’s packages ever since he joined the grid back in 2019 – will be critical in the expected 2025 multi-team title battle.
Not spending the first quarter of that season as what he called the fourth best team and instead having “a car we think we can win a championship with from round one” would avoid the uphill slog he faced once McLaren had upgraded its MCL38 into victory contention in May’s Miami round this year.
"I'm very proud of how rapidly Lando is picking up from the situations that he experiences on track and to some extent even off track, to become a better and better driver" Andrea Stella
But, as Verstappen has just brilliantly proved, off weekends such as Vegas cannot be included in a successful campaign. Especially one where the Verstappen/Red Bull partnership will be the opposition, plus Ferrari’s coming driver line-up strength upgrade.
This is why that last Las Vegas stint is so mentally important for Norris and McLaren. But he has a chance to make further important personal gains for 2025 even as the current campaign wraps up.
Because for all his typically downbeat assessments post-race in Vegas, 2024 can only go down as a positive for Norris.
He magnanimously said that “I'll probably look back on a lot in 20 years or 30 years – that I fought such a driver” in Verstappen. But so too will Norris be able to regale of his Miami breakthrough win and his subsequent demolitions of the F1 pack at Zandvoort and in Singapore.
He can also say he pushed Verstappen as aggressively as the Dutchman’s uncompromising style requires and came out on top – a la Mexico.
The last point also had Stella reflecting how “from where he was in Austria [contact with Verstappen that had Norris out and with a track limits penalty] to where he was in Austin, and just the week after in Mexico, he learned so quickly".
“I'm very proud of how rapidly Lando is picking up from the situations that he experiences on track and to some extent even off track, to become a better and better driver,” Stella added.
Over the final two rounds to come in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, Verstappen will not give up his quest to end the season on 10 victories – and Red Bull is still lacking a dry-weather win since Spain in June.
Here, then, is the perfect chance for Norris to lay down important markers ahead of 2025.
Assuming Verstappen takes this approach it will be very interesting to see how he and Norris fare around the changes to F1’s racing guidelines expected this weekend. Any further wheel-to-wheel battle will live pointedly in the memory of each over the coming winter break.
But Norris also needs to leave 2024 with the intra-McLaren momentum too. Its ‘Papaya Rules’ requirements to favour the Briton have been called off, which means Oscar Piastri is unleashed to attack his team-mate in the same vein as in the Hungarian and Italian GPs.
If Norris can win in Qatar and Abu Dhabi – plus there’s also another race with 2024’s final sprint schedule at the former – he’d reduce the gap to Verstappen to 46 points (assuming they finished 1-2 in each contest). Here McLaren’s team orders sagas become pertinent again, as if Norris had gained the 17 points lost at Budapest and Monza this year, the gap would be just 29.
And, if Verstappen were to have had poor weekends or even worse reliability, and the gap between them ended up even smaller, then the points Norris lost through McLaren’s team orders – or lack thereof – would be brought into even sharper focus.
The case that his season could have turned out differently would’ve be even stronger. As Norris himself said, Verstappen “made mistakes” under pressure this term, which would’ve increased with the smallest possible points gap.
Ultimately, the bigger point remains that McLaren’s slower start made the ultimate difference. But there’s one final reason why a golden end to a season is critical for Norris’s 2025 hopes in the context of it avoiding such a start next time.
Even though the 2024 title has been lost in good grace for Norris, there’s still much he can take from what is unquestionably his best F1 campaign to date
It all centres on the momentum such a streak can provide. Verstappen launched off a brilliant 2020 Abu Dhabi win to take on Hamilton and Mercedes from the off in 2021. But a further five years back lies an even stronger example from Nico Rosberg.
Having been so pissed off by his 2015 title defeat against what was actually pretty outrageous driving from Hamilton at the Austin start that year, Rosberg channelled it remarkably well. Not only did he win the remaining 2015 Mexican, Brazilian and Abu Dhabi races, but he kept the fire it lit burning for the following year. In the opening Melbourne round of his title campaign, Rosberg made sure he got his elbows out against Hamilton at Turn 1 (even after Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel carved by them both).
In doing so, he showed he’d made good on the lesson he’d had chucked at him in the shape of a podium hat in that 2015 Austin defeat.
McLaren is expected to be the Qatar and Abu Dhabi pacesetter, but its already warning about Red Bull’s high-speed turn prowess with those events in mind.
Even though the 2024 title has been lost in good grace for Norris, there’s still much he can take from what is unquestionably his best F1 campaign to date. There are close battles still to be drawn.
