Max Verstappen didn’t win the Las Vegas Grand Prix, but his fifth-place finish still made the Red Bull driver only the sixth racer to become a four-time Formula One world champion.
The Dutch driver ran a controlled race and did exactly what he needed to do — finish ahead of rival Lando Norris of McLaren — to take his fourth consecutive F1 title.
“Oh my God, man, what a season,” said an emotional Verstappen, in the car, after crossing the line one spot ahead of Norris. “Four times. Thank you to everyone. I mean, it was a little bit more difficult than last year, but we pulled through, and we gave it all.”
As the cars around him began jockeying for podium positions with about 20 laps to go, a quick radio exchange between Verstappen and the team demonstrated his focus for Las Vegas; “Max,” the team radioed, “just don’t lose sight of our aim today,” which elicited the response “yeah, yeah, I’m doing my race.”
Verstappen did and left Las Vegas with an insurmountable 63-point lead. The title put him in exclusive company, joining Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost, Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel, and Lewis Hamilton as the only drivers to win more than three F1 world championships.
“Definitely not,” Verstappen answered, when asked if he ever expected to join the four-time club when he started racing. “I was just happy to be there and dreaming of potential victories or standing on the podium, the normal things that are already very difficult to achieve. Then we just got on to that run after, of course, a tough few years that we kept trying and then we just hit the ground running with a new concept, and like I said, to be standing here as a four-time world champion is just incredible.”
At the front in Las Vegas, George Russell started on pole in his Mercedes and never really looked back, repelling a late challenge by teammate Lewis Hamilton to take his third career victory and deliver a Mercedes 1-2.
“I was planning on flying in a couple of hours, but I’m definitely not getting on that flight,” said Russell. “I think we won the race in stint one. I knew, from there on, the only way we would probably lose the victory is if I grained the tires and opened them up, so it was just a case of managing my pace, managing in the right corners and bringing it home.”
In the end, Russel finished 7.313 seconds ahead of Hamilton, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz third, another 4.593 seconds back. Las Vegas marked the first Mercedes 1-2 since Russell led Hamilton home in Brazil in 2022.
Hamilton put in a stellar drive after the seven-time world champion started 10th and scythed through the field to finish second to his teammate.
“I had a great time; when you’re progressing and moving forward, it’s always a great feeling,” said Hamilton, who departs for Ferrari at the end of the season. “At the end of the day, George did a great job, did everything he was supposed to do and I’m happy for him and I’m just grateful I could get back up there to support the team with a 1-2.”
Meanwhile, Ferrari continued on its roll in the constructors championship, slicing 12 points off the gap to leading McLaren to bring it to 24. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished fourth, while McLaren’s second driver, Oscar Piastri, finished seventh.
With two Grands Prix and a sprint race to go, 114 constructor points remain on the table in 2024, not including fastest laps.
“I think, over the last few weekends, we’ve done a good job,” said Sainz, who will leave Ferrari to join Williams Racing next year. “[At the next race in] Qatar, I expect to struggle and I expect McLaren and Mercedes to be very strong, probably also Red Bull, so I think it’s going to be a very challenging weekend for us. That’s why today it was important for us to get the maximum number of points available, and we kind of did that for the pace that we had.”
The Scuderia missed a chance to gain even more ground after Sainz lost time aborting a pit stop on Lap 28. That happened because the team failed to be ready for his stop, despite the driver asking for new rubber several times before the botched attempt. When he pitted a lap later for tires and lost a place to Hamilton, Sainz snapped and said “wake up guys; come on.”
On top of that, Ferrari left Leclerc out too long and he also lost a place to Hamilton when he stopped on Lap 32. Nevertheless, Leclerc still closed the gap in the driver standings to second-placed Norris to just 21 points, with another 58 driver points on offer to end the year, not including fastest laps.
In the end, Sainz said that the errors really didn’t matter as the Silver Arrows seemed to have the upper hand on race pace.
“I think today Mercedes was just the quicker car,” said Sainz. “We just struggled too much with graining — more than what we were anticipating — and it meant that we couldn’t push on the tires. We were having to save so much that we couldn’t use the pace of the car and we were just simply not fast enough, so not our day.”
