Lando Norris believes the conditions in Las Vegas will “hinder” the McLaren car ahead of this weekend’s crucial race.
Norris has a 24-point lead in the F1 world championship over teammate Oscar Piastri after two consecutive victories in Mexico and Brazil, with three rounds remaining and 83 points still on the table. Max Verstappen, chasing an unlikely fifth successive title, is 49 points off the Briton.
Yet despite McLaren’s superiority this year, the papaya-clad outfit have struggled in Vegas in the first two years of the event. Norris crashed out early on in the inaugural race in 2023 and only finished sixth last year, on the same weekend Verstappen sealed his fourth championship.
Vegas typically has the coldest conditions of any race on the calendar, with temperatures dropping to around 12C for the race under the lights. While the MCL39 struggles in cooler conditions, the likes of Mercedes (who won in Vegas last year, with George Russell leading a one-two finish) thrive in lower temperatures.
Asked whether Vegas will help or hinder the McLaren car, Norris replied: "Hinder, for sure. I think it was our worst race last year. so I'm not really looking forward to it.
"We've been trying to work quite hard on improving those things. We know Mercedes were incredibly strong there last year, as well as Red Bull and Ferraris. I think we were the bottom of those four.
"So yeah, we'll wait and see. Obviously, we've improved a lot of things this year, so I'm not going to be too negative about it.
"I think there's plenty to look forward to. We know Abu Dhabi and Qatar are ones we are looking forward to. Las Vegas just a little bit less, because they've been probably some of our weakest races over the last two years, so let's wait and see."
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, however, believes analysis after last year’s Vegas race will give the team a clear direction in which to follow for their car.
"Vegas last year was one of the most difficult races," the Italian said. "We had difficulties with the behaviour of the tyres, as you say, and the behaviour of the tyres in qualifying, because we were not fast, and behaviour of the tyres in the race because we had a lot of graining.
"We also had some aerodynamic issues when we tried to offload the rear wing, we saw that we were losing too much efficiency, and we had a bit of issues with the setup of the car, in a way, trying to compensate this graining and some of the understeer.
"The review from Vegas last year gave us a lot of information to try and find a way to improve. I would say that from a tyre point of view, from an aerodynamic efficiency point of view, and from a car set up point of view, we know in which direction we should change compared to last year.
"Will it be enough to be competitive now? We will only see it in in Vegas, but definitely we took actions in response to what we saw last year, because certainly the performance wasn't satisfactory enough."
The Las Vegas Grand Prix takes place on 21-23 November, with the race at 4am (GMT) on Sunday morning, 10pm local time.
