2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix – Race Report (2024)

Las Vegas Strip Circuit, Saturday, 23 November

Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, as well as Team Principal Andrea Stella, after the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

As it happened:

•Both cars hold their positions off the start
•Oscar is overtaken by Hulkenburg, dropping him back to P9, but then gets back past him
•Lando closes up on Gasly in P5 and, on Lap 8, manages to overtake him
•Hamilton overtakes Oscar for P8
•On Lap 9, Lando pits for a set of Hard tyres
•Oscar gets handed a 5-second penalty, which he serves during his pit stop on Lap 11 while switching to the Hards
•Hamilton overtakes Lando for P6, but both are promoted after Perez pits
•Both drivers are struggling with graining, so Oscar boxes for a fresh set of Hards
•Lando stays out for a few more laps before also pitting for Hards
•The pit stops shuffle out by Lap 34, with Lando running in P6 and Oscar in P7
•In the closing laps, Lando boxes into the gap between himself and Oscar to secure an extra point for the fastest lap
•The Chequered Flag falls, with Lando in P6 and Oscar in P7
•Congratulations to Max Verstappen on capping a fantastic season with a fourth Drivers' World Championship

“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.

“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.”

“A very difficult evening, we just struggled with the tyres, so there’s definitely some things to look at. I don’t think we hoped for a whole lot more than where we finished, but obviously the gap was a bit disappointing. OK points and hopefully the next two are a bit more fun for us.

“Finally, congratulations to Max on winning the Driver’s Championship. He’s fought well throughout the year and is well deserving of this fourth championship.”

“Before anything else, I’d like to express personally, and on behalf of our team, congratulations to Max Verstappen. Four-time World Champion, one of the greatest in the history of the sport. He thoroughly deserves this title, he was incredibly consistent, even when his car wasn’t the best. Max and Red Bull Racing overall as a team supporting him have done a superb job. Well done to them.

“For our part, we can be proud that we’ve given Max something to think about and taken the title race this deep into the season. I think we lost too many points at the start of the year, when we were not competitive enough. Once the car improved, I think we’ve proven we have the qualities as a team, and the qualities in Lando and Oscar, to contend for both titles.

“Tonight, we can’t be happy with the result, because we go racing to finish on the podium, and we go racing to win. We had some headaches with car and tyre performance, and we’ll be doing a lot of analysis between here and Lusail. Considering the weekend we’ve had, I think we were able to limit the damage this evening. Qatar and Abu Dhabi should be more suitable ground for the MCL38 – but there are four teams in contention for victory all of the time. That’s great for Formula 1, but it means we have to be performing at our absolute best if we are to win the Constructors’ Championship. Not very long ago, the notion that we would be in contention for the title would have been incredible, unthinkable – but now it’s realistic and we have to finish the job.”