Why does Max Verstappen have his golden opportunity in Las Vegas?
The Las Vegas GP can decide the future of four-time F1 champion Max Verstappen’s season.
LAS VEGAS.—The Las Vegas Grand Prix can resolve once and for all what is the fate of the 2025 season of Max Verstappen. His hopes of fighting for the title can die, he can survive, almost with artificial assistance, or he can be resurrected in such a way that the McLarens turn their papaya color into a pale orange.
The pilot of Red Bullfour-time champion of the Formula 1 He is called, for many reasons, to be the favorite on the street track of the Las Vegas Strip, for various technical and hands-on reasons, but he also has no choice: either he drinks it or he spills it, there is no middle ground.
Today, Verstappen is 49 points behind the world leader, the British Lando Norris already 25 from the subleader, Oscar Piastri. The rest of the grid, the remaining 17, no longer have any mathematical possibility, but even Max’s claim seems very unlikely when there are only 83 points left to be played in three Grands Prix (Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi), plus the Sprint in Lusail.
Very complicated, but not impossible for Verstappen
In the scenario of a Norris victory, Max Verstappen would survive, marginally, only with second place, since that would mean that Lando would reach 415 points, to Max’s 359, it would be 56 units difference with 58 to be played in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
Any combination that means Norris leads his Netherlands rival by more than 58 points after Las Vegas would mean the elimination of Verstappen.
Now, a victory for Verstappen and a catastrophe at McLaren, where its drivers scored very low or scored terrible DNFs or retirements, would revive the ‘creature’ that has terrorized F1 in the last five years.
How Max Verstappen can win in Las Vegas 2025
Red Bull, with Verstappen first and Sergio Perez In third place, he took two thirds of the podium in Las Vegas in 2023, the year in which the 6,201-meter circuit debuted on the F1 calendar.
In 2024, it was Mercedes who did the same with a 1-2, to the rhythm of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.
In both years, it was a Ferrari, first with Charles Leclerc and then with Carlos Sainzwhich completed the award ceremony.
In 2023, it was a Grand Prix full of emotions and passing the last laps among the top three, while the second year, Russell did not have to scramble as much to win a GP that was more linear.
What is important are the characteristics of the circuit that make it more favorable for some drivers and teams, as well as less favorable for others.
McLaren without results in Las Vegas
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri do not know the Las Vegas podium. What’s more, Norris knows the rigidity of the walls well, since in 2023 he had a serious accident at turn 14.
Piastri has only scored seven points twice and Norris eight. This is not to become a rule, but to set a precedent.
Las Vegas is a slippery track with very little grip
Like any good street circuit, Las Vegas is a track that challenges the drivers from the first moment due to the little grip that the cars achieve from the first minute.
This is due to several factors, initially it is a ‘dirty’ track, that is, it has dust, which naturally accumulates as it is the roads of a city, not a racetrack built expressly to be a race track.
When there is dust on a track, the tires do not adhere to the asphalt on its entire surface and it becomes a slippery floor.
Obviously, with the passage of cars and other categories, in this case, the Academy F1, the track evolves, is cleaned and begins to be less slippery in terms of dirt, but there are other elements that complicate grip.
Adhesion is also favored by the passage of racing cars that leave rubber on the asphalt, which helps the cars that follow them in other sessions have better grip than if only the streets were used regularly.
Temperature and rain also complicate the track
Dust is not the only element that hinders the performance of the tires and therefore the cars, there is also the temperature, which since Las Vegas is a night race has been a key factor when the drivers try to warm up the tires.
The optimal performance of Pirelli tires is achieved at a specific temperature that varies on each track and each of the compounds chosen for the weekend (in this case C3, C4 and C5). Overheating a tire or having it too cold can be terminal errors, especially in Qualy on Friday.
The weather forecast in Las Vegas for the next few days predicts minimum temperatures of 46 degrees Fahrenheit, about 8 Celsius, and great chances of rain.
The colder the environment, the asphalt crystallizes and becomes a skating rink, the tires become gibberish to tune up, but the case of rain is separate.
In the event of rains like those that hit the most famous city in Nevada on Tuesday, November 18, first, the track loses the rubber it had acquired during the sessions and becomes “green” again (without glued rubber) and more slippery.
But if the rainfall is very heavy, which on Tuesday flooded parts of the avenue known as the Strip, which runs between turns 12 and 14 and includes the longest straight of the circuit, it could even be impossible to race.
Who does all this benefit, well, Max Verstappen, who has developed a mastery that he teaches, from time to time, in the Grand Prix of how to negotiate these types of conditions, and, on the contrary, it is a situation that has given McLaren cars headaches, in particular to Oscar Piastri, who suffered a lot in Baku and Mexico due to similar situations of poor grip.
By having very fast corners and long straights, Las Vegas can be classified as a track with low aerodynamic load or little drag (air resistance), just the type of layouts where Red Bull has been able to discount times and performance from the powerful MCL39, which works much better on circuits with medium and slow corners, that is, with a lot of load.
Large passing areas
Another element that winks at Verstappen is the braking of turns 12, 14 and 17, where overtaking has been manufactured in the past. Max has nothing to lose, everything to gain, and the role of bully doesn’t bother him.
Is pole position key?
Since F1 returned from the Summer break, there have been seven Grands Prix and two Sprints, and in all of them the driver who had pole position has won.
Netherlands Piastri Monza Verstappen Baku Verstappen Singapore Russell Austin Verstappen Sprint Austin Verstappen Mexico Norris Sao Paulo Norris Sprint S.Paulo Norris
In Las Vegas, last year the pole went to George Russell and he won. In 2023, the pole went to Leclerc and Verstappen won from second place.
This is not law, but there is a trend.
Internal fight at McLaren in favor of Verstappen
Finally, Max runs for himself and his risks can only bring him benefits, he is the one who has nothing to lose, but Norris and Piastri, before thinking about Verstappen, have their minds set on the fact that they must surpass their teammate, in particular Oscar.
The Australian is 24 points behind Norris and a retirement, combined with a victory for him, would return him to the lead in the F1 Drivers’ Championship. Every time they are side by side, tire by tire, it is a temptation for tragedy and for Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren, to tear his hair out.
Given the suspicions that McLaren prefers Norris to be champion, its decision to invest places in Monza at the expense of Piastri, the performance of the number 81 has gone underground with errors, crashes and poor qualifications.
But now Piastri knows that in Qualy and in the race nothing is useful to him other than staying in front of Norris and he should not think about Verstappen. Paradoxically, this internal struggle is doing the favor to Max, who is licking his mustaches at imagining a contact between papayas that would destroy the race and give him a chance to not only stay alive in the championship, but to put real pressure on it and, why not? Winning the fifth F1 monarch trophy.
