Verstappen cools the hype: ‘Vegas isn’t Monza with neon’
Max Verstappen isn’t buying the idea that Red Bull’s low-downforce formbook makes Las Vegas a gimme, and he told Ted Kravitz as much after a scrappy, stop-start FP2 on the Strip.
Sky F1’s pit-lane reporter floated the obvious comparison: Monza and Baku – both trimmed out, both Verstappen wins this season – and Vegas demands a similar setup thanks to that monster 1.9km blast down Las Vegas Boulevard. Verstappen’s answer? Not so fast.
“It’s been okay, just been difficult to understand what to do with these interruptions,” Verstappen said after a red-flagged session that ended with drivers queued for laps they never got to start. “I think we still need to improve a little bit, to find a bit more grip out there. Also the track of course is improving quite a bit every session. So, we’ll try to just focus on that, seeing how we can operate the tyres for qualifying and the race.”
Then came the pushback. “But it’s a lot colder here, and the surface is very slippery,” he said when told his season’s low-downforce wins might translate here. “So you cannot compare to other tracks, just because it’s low downforce. It’s not a given that you are then quick here.”
On a night that never really found a rhythm, the leaderboard only added to the uncertainty. Championship leader Lando Norris topped FP2 with a 1:33.602, just 0.029s ahead of Kimi Antonelli, with Charles Leclerc third. Verstappen? Ninth, and looking like he had more questions than laps.
The manhole cover saga reared its head again and twice halted running, the second red flag arriving with two minutes on the clock. That robbed several front-runners of a final push lap and left long-run reads incomplete. In other words: anyone claiming they know who’s quickest is guessing.
Verstappen’s caution is rooted in the quirks that make Vegas its own beast. Yes, you shave wing here like Monza and Baku. No, that doesn’t mean the car behaves the same. The cold desert night keeps tyre temps on a knife-edge, the surface never really locks in the way a “normal” street track does, and if you miss that operating window, you’re a passenger. It’s part of why Red Bull’s usual set-and-smash routine can look mortal on the Strip.
Of Verstappen’s five wins this year, those back-to-back at Monza and Baku underline why the comparison keeps coming up. But even at Red Bull, there’s a recognition Vegas demands a different compromise: drag for the straight, stability for the tight chicanes, and enough tyre energy to avoid skating in Sector 3. Miss by a degree and you give away chunks of lap time with no obvious fix before quali.
All of which folds into the bigger picture. Verstappen needs a clean weekend to keep his title hopes on life support, while Norris – who looks comfortable and unbothered right now – leads both the standings and the timesheets. If Red Bull find the window overnight, this becomes a straight fight. If they don’t, Vegas could become another race where the RB21 is quick in places, awkward in others, and nothing like the nailed-on favourite of recent seasons.
There’s still time to swing it. Track evolution here is brutal; FP3 can flip expectations in a heartbeat, and a slipstream on the lap that matters can put you on the right side of the front rows. But Verstappen’s tone said it all: he’s not selling certainty he doesn’t feel.
It’s a reminder that Vegas isn’t just Monza at midnight. It’s colder, slicker, harsher on tyres, and unforgiving if you’re a half-step off. The Strip is the show, but the stopwatch doesn’t care.
