Norris: "Verstappen drove better than everyone" in 2024
Having lost the mathematical chances of securing his first F1 title at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, McLaren driver Lando Norris reckoned that Max Verstappen has driven "better than everyone" during the 2024 F1 season.
McLaren endured a difficult weekend at Las Vegas. The team that has been regarded the quickest over the past months, looked in the mix in qualifying initially, but Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri failed to improve their lap times from Q1 in the same way as their rivals were able to in the following qualifying sections.
As a result, Norris, who had been the only driver with a mathematical chance to beat Max Verstappen for the drivers' title in 2024, ended up only sixth quickest, but the more disappointing blow was for him that he finished behind his Dutch rival.
In the race, Norris had to out-score Verstappen by at least three points on in order to keep alive his dwindling title hopes. However, the British driver struggled for pace in the race and finished down in P6 while his championship rival was able to take fifth, with both replicating their respective starting positions.
His team-mate Oscar Piastri started from P8 on the grid, but was handed out a five-second time penalty for failing to take his grid box correctly. The Australian managed to gain a few places after his second pit stop, but his seventh-place finish was still a disappointing result.
The two-time race winner was quick to praise his championship rival for having made hardly any mistakes during the eventful 2024 F1 season.
“Firstly, big congratulations to Max on winning the Drivers’ Championship, he deserved it. He drove better than everyone over the course of the year, and rarely makes a mistake, so congrats to him for delivering once again.
Explaining his own struggles during the 50-lap Nevadan race, Norris said that his MCL38 has simply lacked pace, and prompted his team to investigate the reasons for the issues from the weekend.
“As for today, it was a reasonable race but we didn’t have any pace in the car, and experienced difficult, challenging conditions. It’s just not been our weekend, we struggled a lot. Clearly we have a lot of things we need to improve on the car for the future.
“We'll now turn our attention to next weekend and coming back stronger in Qatar, a circuit that should suit our car better than Vegas. All our focus is on these last two races," concluded Norris.
