Lando Norris finished second behind Max Verstappen in Nevada, moving him closer to winning his first F1 drivers’ championship.
Published November 23, 2025
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won Saturday’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, but McLaren’s Lando Norris finished second, extending his lead over teammate Oscar Piastri to 30 points and clinching the F1 title.
Piastri finished fourth after Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, who was ahead of the Australian at the checkered flag, gained five seconds for a jump start.
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Last year’s floodlight race winner George Russell, also making his 150th start, completed the podium for Mercedes.
There are two grands prix and one sprint left, worth a maximum of 58 points, but Norris has 408 points to Piastri’s 378, leaving four-time world champion Verstappen mathematically still in contention with 366 points.
Norris finished 20.741 seconds behind, but with McLaren already clinching the constructors’ championship for the second year in a row, he can claim his first title in Qatar next weekend.
pretty decent gap
“The car was working pretty well, it was more to my liking,” said Verstappen, who was carried to the podium with Norris and Russell in a Lego pink Cadillac convertible driven by actor Terry Crews as fireworks lit up the sky above the Strip.
“There was a big difference in the end.”
This was Verstappen’s 69th career win, his sixth of the season, and his 125th podium finish at the 150th Grand Prix, the 150th Red Bull-Honda partnership, and his eighth consecutive podium finish.
Norris lost the lead to Verstappen at the start and dropped back to third after jumping wide at the first corner to open the way for the Dutch driver and Russell.
He regained second place from Russell on lap 34 of 50, but then had to manage his fuel until the end.
“I let Max win,” he joked. “I let him go. He had a great race. No, I just braked too late,” he said, adding an expletive that could land him in trouble with the governing FIA on live television.
“The performance there wasn’t my best performance, but the guy won by 20 seconds because he just did a better job and they were a little faster.”
Antonelli finished fifth, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc sixth and Williams’ Carlos Sainz seventh. Racing Bull’s Isaac Hajjar finished eighth, with Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton rounding out the top ten.
Piastri dropped from fifth to seventh on the opening lap after colliding with Racing Bull’s Liam Lawson, who suffered extensive damage to his car and fell to last place.
By lap 23, Verstappen had built up a 20 second lead and pitted at the halfway point, resuming his lead after Russell and Norris had already changed to hard tires.
Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll was overtaken by Sauber’s Gabriel Bortleto as the Brazilian rookie dived aggressively into the first corner and went off the road, causing both to retire immediately.
Alpine’s Pierre Gasly also spun at the start and the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) was activated on the second lap to allow marshals to collect debris between Turns 1 and 4.
After contact between Williams’ Alex Albon and Hamilton, the VSC was activated again on lap 16 due to more debris on the track, and the latter continued to race from 19th place at the bottom of the grid to 13th place on the opening lap.
Albon, whose team lost radio contact with the car shortly after the start, was given a five-second penalty for causing the collision and was given a further disciplinary action for breaking start procedures.
