Norris shrugs off ‘play it safe’ talk: McLaren will keep pushing after Vegas DSQ
If there was a moment to go conservative, it would’ve been now. Both McLarens were thrown out of the Las Vegas Grand Prix for excessive plank wear, a brutal post-race twist that wiped out a one-two on the road and handed Max Verstappen a clear run at the title momentum. Lando Norris’ answer to whether McLaren should now dial back the risk? Not a chance.
In fact, he argued, they might not have taken enough.
“In some ways, you can almost say we didn’t take enough risk,” Norris told reporters ahead of Qatar. “It’s not as simple as just looking at it and going, ‘Oh, they did that and that’s why they were quick’. In fact, we were slower because of the issues we had, not quicker.”
The FIA’s post-race checks in Vegas found the skid blocks on both cars below the 9mm limit — two illegal measurements on Norris’ MCL39, three on Oscar Piastri’s. The double disqualification stung, not just for the lost result but for the optics: a team peaking into the season’s final stretch suddenly caught out on a fundamental. Yet there’s no sign of McLaren reaching for the ride-height wrench just to play safe.
Raising the car would reduce the risk of grounding, sure. But in this ground-effect era, that’s performance left on the table. And with two grands prix left — plus a Sprint in Qatar — Norris knows exactly what happens if they blink.
“We still need to push everything to the limit, as you always do, because Red Bull are just as quick,” he said. “If we don’t put things in the right condition, like in Brazil, they’ll be quicker than us and they’ll win.
“We’re here because we want to win. We’re going to fight until the end.”
The championship picture tightened after Vegas, but Norris remains on top of the standings heading into Lusail. That fact underpins McLaren’s stance. The team can’t guard its way to a title with Red Bull lurking — and Verstappen doesn’t need a second invitation.
Andrea Stella echoed the mood while offering a useful diagnosis: Vegas was its own beast.
“The conditions we experienced last weekend and which led to the onset of porpoising and excess grounding, compared to what was expected, are very specific to the operating window of the car in Vegas and the circuit characteristics,” the McLaren team principal said. “We have a well-established and consolidated way of setting up the car and we are confident this will lead us to an optimal plan for the coming races, starting from the Lusail International Circuit.”
Translation: the Strip’s bumps, surface evolution and cold night-time temperatures pushed the car into a window McLaren didn’t quite anticipate. That doesn’t mean the same spec, the same setup or the same risk profile will trip them up in Qatar.
Lusail is a different animal anyway. Long, loaded corners, a fast-flowing rhythm, and kerbs that have historically punished the careless but rewarded a planted, high-downforce car. There’s also the added jeopardy of a Sprint — parc fermé arrives early, the mileage window shrinks, and the runway to correct a set-up misread is much shorter. It’s where conviction about your tools matters.
Norris’ insistence that McLaren were actually “slower because of the issues” in Vegas is the key tell. The DSQ made headlines, but their pace trough wasn’t born from skating the plank too thin; it came from the porpoising and grounding that unsettled the car. Fix that, and they expect the lap time to come back — without surrendering the aggressive ride heights that have made the MCL39 such a weapon since mid-season.
None of this guarantees a clean weekend. The boundaries in F1 are tight and the consequences are expensive. But this late in the year, with a title lead to defend and a rival of Verstappen’s calibre looming, “risk management” is a tidy phrase for “give away performance.” McLaren haven’t rebuilt their season just to flinch now.
So the plan for Qatar is as uncomplicated as it is unforgiving: maximise the car’s window, manage the grounding, and keep the hammer down. If they get it right, they keep control of a championship that’s now running on fumes. If they back off, Red Bull will smell it instantly.
Norris seems fine with the stakes.
“We still want to win these last few races,” he said. “We’ll fight until the end.”
