Autobayng News Team
Max Verstappen won the world championship in Las Vegas 12 months ago but this year’s race could rule him out of contention for a fifth consecutive title.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix is the first of three consecutive rounds which will conclude the 2025 F1 season. Here are five talking points for the third edition of F1’s race on the Strip.
And then there were two?
Verstappen goes into the antepenultimate round of the world championship 49 points behind Lando Norris. That’s almost the equivalent of two grand prix wins, and there are only three plus one sprint race left on the schedule.
Norris has won the last two rounds and if he makes it three in a row Verstappen must join him on the podium to keep his title hopes alive. But to have a credible chance of winning this year’s title, Verstappen needs to reverse the gains Norris has made over those last two rounds.
To do that, nothing less than a win will realistically do. Even if Verstappen wins all the remaining races, he would need Norris to finish no higher than fifth in all of them – and for Oscar Piastri not to finish second every time – to take the title.
Mercedes favourites?
For Verstappen to make those kinds of gains on Norris he needs other cars between him and the McLarens. But Yuki Tsunoda is showing no signs of getting to grips with the RB21: he’s only scored points in one of the last four grands prix.
Mercedes look like the best candidates to get in between the title contenders. However they could even prove the team to beat, which wouldn’t help Verstappen’s cause. They were unusually competitive at this track last year: George Russell romped to victory from pole position while Lewis Hamilton completed a one-two for the team from 10th on the grid.
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However the ‘cool temperatures equals competitive Mercedes’ formula hasn’t held at every track this year. Their last victory came in the heat of Singapore.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who scored the best result of his career to date in Brazil two weeks ago, said: “The funny thing is that in all the tracks where we were meant to be good this year, we were not so good, and at the tracks where we weren’t expected to be good, we were good.”
Antonelli conceded that, on paper at least, a cooler race should suit them. “In Vegas, with the cold temperature, definitely it should help the car. We saw also this year that usually with cold temperature the car behaves better than with hot temperature, so hopefully we can have the same pace in Vegas.”
Earlier start
Las Vegas has always been one of the coolest races on the calendar – in the literal sense, at least – due to its November calendar slot and late start times. But the latter has changed this year.
The first two races on the Las Vegas Strip Circuit started at 10pm local time. For the third running of the race, this has been brought forward to 8pm.
That is still well over three hours after sundown, but it could be enough to make a noticeable difference to surface temperatures. It could easily be enough to have an effect on the competitive order as today’s cars are extremely sensitive to such variations.
However the effect of the earlier start time will be more obviously felt in the logistics of running the race. Teams won’t have to cope with working quite as late at night, a change which should make the 11-hour time zone shift for the following race in Qatar a little easier to cope with.
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Pipe down!
Ferrari failed to score in a grand prix for the third time this year (excluding sprint races) in Brazil and fell from second to fourth in the championship. That result did not go down well with chairman John Elkann.
Contrasting their performance to Ferrari’s victory in the World Endurance Championship, Elkann said: “If we look at the Formula 1 championship, we can say that we have mechanics who are winning the championship with their performance and everything that has been done in the pit stops. If we look at our engineers, there is no doubt that the car has improved.
“If we look at the rest, it is not up to standard. And we certainly have drivers who must focus on driving and talk less, because we still have important races ahead of us, and it is not impossible to achieve second place.”
What will Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc – not to mention team principal Frederic Vasseur – make of this bizarre broadside from the man in charge at Ferrari? And will the man himself put in an appearance at F1’s showpiece race to smooth things over?
Aston Martin look vulnerable
It’s no understatement to say big things are expected from Aston Martin in 2026. But in the meantime they are having a low-key end to the 2025 season.
They suffered a setback in their pursuit of Racing Bulls for sixth in the championship in Brazil, and are now looking over their shoulders at Haas and Sauber, both within 10 points of them. The former looks like a particular threat at their home race following the successful upgrade package they introduced in Austin which Oliver Bearman used to claim top-six finishes in the last two races.
Aston Martin have been particularly vulnerable on high-speed tracks: they scored nothing at Spa, Monza and Baku. This looks like being a tough weekend for Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, and a late-season slip down the points table is a clear threat.
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