Title fight turns jagged for McLaren as Jos Verstappen questions “clear difference” between Norris and Piastri
From the strip to the standings, Las Vegas pulled a hard left on McLaren’s season. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri both crossed the line in the points, only to lose the lot when the stewards binned their results for excessive plank wear. It was the sort of post-race twist that tightens jaws on the pit wall and gives the title narrative fresh teeth.
The headline numbers matter. Piastri remains 24 points behind Norris with two rounds to go, rather than the 30 it would’ve been had the result stuck — a tiny mercy amid a bruising run. Less kind for Woking is the other consequence: Max Verstappen’s win and the double McLaren DSQ pull the Red Bull driver level on points with Piastri, and keep Norris 24 clear of both.
That’s the breathing space Norris needed. It’s also the sort of gap Verstappen’s camp will happily needle. Jos Verstappen didn’t waste the moment, suggesting there’s a visible split in how the two McLarens are behaving at the moment.
“The pressure is now on McLaren, and they will feel it,” he told Formule1.nl. “It is still the case that if Max wins the remaining races and Norris finishes second every time, Norris will become world champion. But Oscar Piastri is also still in the running, and he won’t be very happy at the moment either. You can see a clear difference between the two McLarens on the track, how they go through the corners. One slides, the other doesn’t, and that raises questions.”
Whether that’s tactical needling or a fair reading of the telemetry from the couch, it lands at a delicate time. This was supposed to be Piastri’s title surge. He’d built a 34-point cushion over Norris after the Dutch Grand Prix, looking for all the world like the coolest head in the room. Six races without a podium later, he’s clinging on to second in the hunt and watching Verstappen’s shadow overlap his.
Inside McLaren, the line hasn’t budged: equal treatment, equal opportunity. They’ve bent over backwards this year to keep both cars in the fight and the garage calm, even when that meant calling awkward strategy plays to preserve parity. It’s been admirably grown-up. The optics aren’t as tidy when one side of the garage is banking big Sundays and the other isn’t.
Andrea Stella, steady as ever, kept the focus on the arithmetic rather than the noise. Asked if Piastri needed a win in Vegas to stay alive, McLaren’s team principal shrugged at the hypothetical.
“My view is that mathematics is what counts,” he told Sky F1. “So Oscar needs to go into the two final races with the will to win them, and take it from there. It’s still a very exciting and interesting finale of the season. So Max, Lando or Oscar, everyone will just go onto the next race thinking we need to win and then we see what happens.”
You can see why he’s not reaching for the panic button. If Verstappen sweeps the final two and Norris trails him home both times, Norris still closes the year on top. That puts the onus on Red Bull to be perfect and gives Norris license to be relentlessly tidy. Piastri’s job is simpler and tougher at once: stop the rot, hit something like the form he had through the summer, and win at least once before Abu Dhabi’s fireworks.
The DSQ itself — the same plank infringement on both cars — isn’t a conspiracy, it’s a headache. It costs millions in points, invites a week of commentary they don’t need, and turns every setup debate in the next seven days into a referendum on fairness. That chatter will keep humming until someone in papaya stands on the top step again.
And yet, this is still salvageable for Piastri. The gap to Norris didn’t grow in Vegas. He’s not chasing a miracle, he’s chasing two clean weekends. The Australian’s reputation was forged on being ice-cold under pressure; that version of Piastri needs to show up in Qatar.
Verstappen, meanwhile, has nothing to lose and everything to gain — which is often when he’s at his most dangerous. As Jos put it: “He still has nothing to lose and can go all out on the attack. And that’s what he’ll do.”
Two races, three drivers, one title. McLaren walks into the Middle East with the points leader and the spotlight. The only way to quiet the rest is simple enough to write and hard enough to execute: keep the car legal, keep the strategies clean, and let the lap time do the talking. If they manage that, the rest of the paddock’s questions will answer themselves.
