As anyone who’s been to Las Vegas, fortunes can change quickly in Sin City—even in Formula One.
Hours after Lando Norris celebrated a second-place finish at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which pushed him 30 points clear of teammate Oscar Piastri in the championship standings and even further ahead of four-time reigning champion Max Verstappen, both McLarens were summoned to a stewards meeting over potentially excessive skid wear. The result was a double disqualification, which not only negated Norris’s second-place and Piastri’s fourth, but also enhanced Verstappen’s victory.
The Red Bull star dominated Saturday night under the lights on the Las Vegas Strip, winning his second race in the past three years in Sin City. After capitalizing on a mistake by Norris, who was the polesitter after a stellar qualifying, into the opening turn of the race, Verstappen never again yielded position and cruised his way to victory by more than 20 seconds.
At the time, the Red Bull driver could have never predicted how consequential his win would become. And yet after the disqualification of both McLaren drivers, Verstappen finds himself in a tie with Piastri, just 24 points shy of Norris in the standings with three points-scoring opportunities to go.
Game on.
The disqualifications also had further ramifications down the grid as George Russell was elevated to second place, despite a challenging drive on Saturday night. His Mercedes teammate, Kimi Antonelli, was bumped up from fifth to third in what was a tremendous weekend for the team in the constructors’ title fight.
From Verstappen’s win (and whether it was enough) to Mercedes’s efforts, here are the most important takeaways from the 2025 Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Verstappen’s Vegas Luck
In a city where luck is at a premium, Max Verstappen left nothing to chance. And then he was still rewarded with a spot of good luck.
There’s little doubt that the Red Bull driver won his second Las Vegas Grand Prix in the past three years by outmaneuvering Norris in the first turn on the first lap of the race. Frankly, the McLaren driver appeared so concerned about the threat that he darted diagonally in front of Verstappen off the starting line, only to run too deep into the corner and allow his rival to easily cutback around and take the lead. The move cost Norris his advantage over Russell too, though he would later pass the Mercedes driver with clearly superior pace last in the race.
All seemed harmonious after that; a standard post-race procedure. Norris joked during his pre-podium interview that he let Verstappen win while being self-deprecating about his own first lap performance. He seemed much lighter and confident about his standing than he did earlier in the season when inconsistent results put him on the back foot in the championship race.
But an unexpected shoe can drop at any time F1. At 1:45 a.m. local time, both McLaren drivers were summoned to meet with the stewards over a breach of technical regulations, related to excessive skid wear on the bottom of each car. The decision then came down three hours later: Norris and Piastri were disqualified. Verstappen would remain the race winner, but more importantly, his two biggest competitors would be leaving Las Vegas empty-handed.
There’s been precedent this season for disqualifications related to skid wear. The FIA requires that the thickness of the skid planks be at least nine millimeters, a parameter that Lewis Hamilton didn’t meet at the early-season Chinese Grand Prix and Nico Hulkenberg failed to adhere to in Bahrain.
Norris had two measurements, both on the right side of his McLaren, fall short of the required guidelines at 8.88 and 8.93 millimeters. Piastri violated the regulations in three different portions of his car, the most excessive of which was measuring at 8.74 millimeters on the front right-hand side.
“During the race, both cars experienced unexpected, high levels of porpoising not seen in the practice sessions, which led to excessive contact with the ground,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said in a statement after the decision. “We are investigating the reasons for this behavior of the car, including the effect of accidental damage sustained by both cars, which we found after the race, and that led to an increase of movement of the floor.
“As the FIA noted, the breach was unintentional, there was no deliberate attempt to circumvent the regulations, and mitigating circumstances also existed.”
F1 fans in recent years will recognize the terminology of porpoising, referring to the excessive bouncing up and down of a car at high speed that often results in a painful ride for the driver and an increased chance of damage to the vehicle’s floor. Norris did start to lose significant amounts of time in the final five laps of the race, though both he and race engineer Will Joseph never explicitly said what sort of issue McLaren was trying to manage.
How the Drivers' Championship looks as we depart Las Vegas... 👀
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 23, 2025
It's got a lot closer at the top, with Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen now LEVEL on points! ⬇️#F1 #LasVegasGP pic.twitter.com/3a4LJBGCRG
The result of the double disqualification is significant, not only for Norris’s advantage over his own teammate, but for feeling more secure about his place over Verstappen. The gap, which would have been 42 points over the Red Bull driver, is now just 24, with Piastri and Verstappen now tied after being more than 100 points apart during the middle of the season.
Much has been made in recent months about whether or not Verstappen had a real chance to win his fifth straight world championship. He would’ve needed to be nearly flawless across the final 10 races of the season to do so, and likely have the two McLaren drivers stumble along the way.
Vegas provided the most significant self-inflicted mistake yet, paving the way for a true three-way battle across the final two race weekends of the season.
Mercedes Solidifies Second-Place Standing
Though Verstappen may have been the biggest beneficiary of the McLaren disqualifications, Mercedes was a close second.
Russell lamented more than once during the race that he was struggling with the steering of his car, but he still managed to keep his car on the podium and was rewarded for staying competitive with a bump up to second place. It’s clear the Las Vegas circuit suits him: in three outings he’s never finished lower than eighth and he won last season at a time when Verstappen and the McLarens appeared to be in a different tier.
But the performance of the evening went to rookie Kimi Antonelli, who started the race 17th on the grid after a difficult qualifying. Mercedes opted to get aggressive, putting the 19-year-old on soft tires at the start—the only of the 20 drivers to do so. After a handful of Lap 1 incidents resulted in an early virtual safety car, Antonelli pitted for hard tires, which he held on to for 48 laps and the checkered flag. He even overcame a five-second time penalty for a false start to edge out Charles Leclerc for the final step on the podium.
Had the McLaren duo not been disqualified, Mercedes would have left the weekend with the exact same gap to Red Bull of 32 points. Instead the team emerged 40 points clear and with a 55-point gap to Ferrari, making second place in the constructors’ championship a near certainty, barring disaster in Qatar or Abu Dhabi.
Hello Darkness, Lewis Hamilton’s Old Friend
Just when you thought the situation at Ferrari couldn’t get worse than public infighting and a team owner calling out the brand’s most recognizable figures, Las Vegas Grand Prix qualifying arrived.
And Lewis Hamilton finished 20th. Dead last.
It was a new career low for Hamilton, who’s never finished last in qualifying on pure pace before. Ferrari also hadn’t had a driver qualify in last place since Giancarlo Fisichella at the 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix—nearly 16 years ago.
Even though he rallied to finish in eighth, scoring a measly four points, Hamilton again sounded despondent after the race.
“I feel terrible. It’s been the worst season ever. No matter how much I try, it just keeps going worse,” Hamilton said.
“I’m trying everything, in and out of the car.”
As it stands, Hamilton is poised to finish with his lowest point total of the past decade, compared to seasons where there were almost always fewer races than the 24 Grands Prix of the 2025 season. He also may go without a podium across an entire season for the first time in his career.
It’s certainly possible that Hamilton could pull some magic out in Qatar or Abu Dhabi, but the harm has largely already been done. The seven-time world champion’s first season has been an unmitigated disaster, one that doesn’t bode well as new regulations await in 2026.
More F1 on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Shocking McLaren Disqualifications at Las Vegas Grand Prix Cause Title Race Upheaval.
