‘Go get Max’? Marko just laughed as Verstappen turned Vegas into a one-man show
There was a flash of orange on pole, a hard squeeze to Turn 1, and then the familiar sight of a Red Bull streaking off into the neon. Las Vegas offered McLaren a shot at putting Max Verstappen under serious pressure. Instead, it handed Helmut Marko his favorite punchline of the night.
McLaren’s radio call to Lando Norris — “go get Max” — came once Norris had muscled his way past George Russell around Lap 35 and finally had clear air to hunt the leader. Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, relayed the message. Max’s response? A grin and the racing equivalent of shrugging his shoulders.
“I have to laugh about it,” Verstappen told Viaplay afterwards. “It only motivates me. It only works adversely. It only motivates me to defend even harder if he would have come.”
Marko, who’s heard just about every motivational gambit in Formula 1, enjoyed it just as much. “This was exactly what Max needed, even though he didn’t really need it,” Red Bull’s advisor said, calling McLaren’s call “the best moment of the race.” Then came his favorite sound effect: “After that, it was poof, poof, poof. One fastest lap after another. That’s typical Max.”
It had all started with Norris getting the launch he wanted but not the braking. From pole, the McLaren wedged Verstappen to the inside, then missed the mark at Turn 1. Verstappen cut back and claimed the lead, Russell followed through, and the tone of the night was set. “Max forced Norris into a mistake,” Marko said of the opening corner. It’s hard to argue.
From there, Verstappen managed the gaps with the kind of calm that’s become his trademark, parrying Norris’s advances whenever they bubbled up. “Max could always respond,” Marko said. “He was the fastest driver and managed his tyres well. Norris would never have overtaken us. It was an incredible Verstappen show. Max more or less controlled the race.”
For a while, the chase had some shape to it. As the laps unwound and traffic cleared, Norris began to inch closer, and the radio message lit the touchpaper. Then the orange car eased off again — a lull explained post-race by data analysis indicating Norris had gone fuel critical in the closing stages. The gap widened. Game over.
The final twist arrived in the stewards’ room. Both McLarens — Norris and Oscar Piastri — were disqualified after the race for excessive plank wear, wiping out their points entirely and turning Verstappen’s victory from emphatic into pivotal. The title picture tightened further: Verstappen drew level on points with Piastri in the standings and sits 24 behind Norris with two rounds left on the 2025 calendar.
Inside Red Bull, you could feel the mood lift. “Verstappen was beaming,” Marko said. “He’s enjoying this. He’s completely back.” The Austrian, notorious for a flutter or two on a good weekend, admitted he’d cashed in as well. “I won quite a bit, but certainly not as much as Max’s bonus!”
It’s the timing that will worry McLaren as much as the stewards’ measurements. Verstappen didn’t just win; he looked untouchable once the challenge arrived. Tell him someone’s coming and he starts rattling off purple sectors like a metronome. You don’t often see the championship leader’s pit wall play hype-man for the opposition, but Vegas had that strange energy — and Verstappen turned it into fuel.
Norris remains the man with the points cushion, but Las Vegas will sting. Pole got away at Turn 1, the chase fizzled under fuel saving, and the DQ turned damage limitation into damage amplification. The McLaren is fast enough to take this fight to the final weekend. But if Marko’s chuckles are anything to go by, Red Bull feel the momentum has shifted.
Two rounds to go, and the driver who needs no invitation to finish a season strong now has exactly the kind he likes. Someone said: go get Max. He did the getting.
