'OMFG': Ferrari blows up at worst moment; shock 1-2 could've been ...

It’s a title that’s been coming for months, but when Max Verstappen got out of his car as a four-time world champion for the first time, his immediate emotion was relief.

“It’s been a long season,” he said after round 22 of 24. “We started off amazingly, it was almost like cruising, but then we had a tough run.

“As a team we kept it together. We kept working on improvements, and we pulled over the line. I’m incredibly proud of everyone, of what they’ve done for me.

“Standing here as a four-time world champion is something that I never thought was possible.

“At the moment I’m just feeling relieved.”

Every F1 qualifying session and race LIVE in 4K on Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer.

It was a title win like none other in the Dutchman’s short but electrifying career as a champion.

His first was a bare-knuckle brawl with Lewis Hamilton in one of the sport’s most controversial seasons.

His second was him riding a wave of Red Bull Racing momentum to seal the deal.

His third was pure domination in as close to a perfect season as is ever likely to be achieved in modern Formula 1.

His fourth, however, was won in a battle with himself and against a car that appeared to get only worse throughout the season.

Though the healthy buffer he built up in the early months ultimately saw him through to the finish, it would have been so easy for him to throw away points flailing for big results that were never on the table for an RB20 that drifted further and further from its workability window.

“At times it was not easy with the car — a clear lack of pace in places — but we still always managed to get the best result out of it or sometimes even more than what we deserved” he told Sky Sports.

“You create your own luck, and I think that’s what we did most of the time.”

Team boss Christian Horner told the broadcaster that the need for Verstappen to get the most from uncompetitive equipment stood this championship out as his most impressive.

“Max has been truly outstanding,” he said. “We had a very difficult summer, but he just kept nailing the results.

“I think this has been his best and hardest championship. He’s shown maturity. He’s delivered on the days when the car isn’t quite there. There’s no-one more deserving of this championship than Max.”

But race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase came closest to nailing the element that made this title distinctive for Verstappen.

“He doesn’t have to be there winning every single thing every weekend,” he told Sky Sports. “He’s come on a lot, and I’m really proud of him.”

Verstappen’s all-or-nothing approach to racing has defined his rise. At times even this season it got the better of him — battles with Lando Norris in Austria and Mexico City spring to mind.

But for the most part in 2024 he’s been far more willing to play the long game, the smart game, to bring home crucial points that tactically topped up his championship buffer.

It was the same this weekend in Las Vegas. Rather than get his elbows out to fight for an unlikely second place ahead of Lewis Hamilton or a podium ahead of the faster Ferrari cars, he settled for a deserved fifth knowing it was enough to claim the championship.

It’s a side of him we’ve never really seen before. While we’ll talk a lot about Norris and McLaren missing chances to exert more pressure, less spoken about is the way Verstappen’s omnipresence was its own sort of pressure applied back in the other direction.

McLaren and Norris cracked, but he never did.

“When he had the quickest car he dominated,” Norris told Sky Sports. “When he didn’t he was still there and always on my heels.

“He made my life tough, and we made his tough at times I’m sure, but he drove a better season.”

MERCEDES SURPRISES WITH ONE-TWO FINISH

“If one would understand these cars!” Toto Wolff exclaimed to Sky Sports after his team claimed an imperious one-two finish in Las Vegas.

Coming totally against the run of form, pole-getter George Russell leading home Lewis Hamilton — who started 10th — will go down as one of the season’s biggest surprises.

Together the two drivers led every session this weekend — FP1, FP2, FP3, Q1, Q2, Q3 and the grand prix.

“Today we really crushed everyone. Dominant. We could’ve gone easily faster. At times we were two seconds quicker than everybody else,” Wolff continued.

The Austrian team boss argued that Mercedes did understand why the car was so fast, but he could offer little more than what was already obvious — that the car likes cold, low-grip conditions and not the heat.

But the bewilderment to have been so competitive this weekend is clearly pleasing all the same

“I’m really happy. The team deserves it. We’ve worked so hard in Brackley and in Brixworth and here in the race team, so it’s a great day,” he said.

Does it mean anything in the narrative of the season?

Without wanting to sound harsh, not really.

Las Vegas is F1’s ultimate outlier. It’s the coldest grand prix on the calendar run on arguably the most extreme circuit layout, particularly when considering the rock-bottom grip levels.

Teams are increasingly disinclined to make parts for these sorts of one-off venues under the cost cap, and so weird results whereby one team just nails their chances are more common.

That should take nothing away from Mercedes’s efforts, though, given it was the only team that managed it — and ahead of several teams that thought they had a real crack at victory only to be found out on race day.

But of more consequence is Russell’s standout performance, the first time he’s converted pole position to victory.

With the exception of his maiden in 2022, all Russell’s wins have come from surprise circumstances, whereas he’s had a habit of tripping up when victory might have been there for the taking.

But there were no such mistakes this time around. From the moment he launched from the line and set off at a blistering pace, there was never really any doubt that he was going to take a commanding victory.

“George’s driving was just from another planet,” Wolff said. “He kept that under control and managed it all the time. I think the defending against [Charles] Leclerc was spectacular.”

Combining with his non-win in Belgium, where he was disqualified for his car being underweight, this sort of result, stemming from a complete performance, will be massively heartening for Mercedes, which will rely on Russell to lead the team next year.

Until this season there were question marks about whether he was the driver who could take a race by the scruff of the neck. Now there are none.

FERRARI DISAPPOINTMENT BOILS OVER AFTER MISSED ONE-TWO

Ferrari was quietly confident that it could score a one-two in Las Vegas. Practice times had suggested its car had the best race pace, and Carlos Sainz getting surprisingly close to pole behind George Russell only solidified the thought in the minds of the team.

But it turned out Mercedes’s pace wasn’t a one-lap wonder — and that Ferrari had over-estimated its mastery of the Pirelli tyres in the unusual cold conditions of the desert.

Charles Leclerc cooked his tyres attempting to pass George Russell on the first lap, and that set the tone for a chaotic night in which Ferrari scraped home in third and fourth, aided somewhat by Verstappen’s reluctance to fight too hard for anything other than finishing ahead of Norris.

It was in this mess we got a glimpse of classic Ferrari chaos.

There were team orders, with Leclerc ceding a place to Sainz in the first stint. Sainz repaid the favour in the second, and they swapped back again after the second pit stop.

There was long-running uncertainty over whether the race would be conducted over one stop or two, something that ultimately cost the team race time to Hamilton and more time to Verstappen.

There was even a late non-pit call for Sainz, which forced him to bail from pit entry very late because the team didn’t have his tyres ready.

At least this wasn’t a breach of regulations, though, with the rules only banning drivers from crossing the white line to enter pit lane, not the opposite.

Worst of all, however, is that the entire saga of a race opened a wound between its two drivers.

Leclerc was caught venting to his engineer, Bryan Bozzi, about feeling wronged by the team’s handling of the race.

“Pick up, please,” he was told on the cool-down lap.

“Yes whatever you want, as always,” he replied sarcastically.

Bozzi attempted to claim the situation: “Charles, you did your job, okay? Thank you.”

But Leclerc wasn’t having it.

“Yeah, I did my job. But being nice f***s me all the f***ing time — all the f***ing time.

“It’s not even being nice, it’s just being respectful. I know I need to shut up, but at one point it’s always the same. Oh my f***ing god.”

The blow-up seemed to spring from two incidents: Sainz giving him a position shortly before the pit stops but apparently later than he’d been requested to, and then Sainz passing him in the final stint for what turned out to be a podium finish despite Leclerc being told that he wouldn’t be challenge him for position.

Leclerc refused to be drawn on the situation but hinted to Sky Sports that Sainz had breached some sort of pre-race agreement, perhaps not for the first time.

“Every time there’s this kind of frustration, there’s not the background for everybody, and there’s just no need for me to go into the details of everything that’s discussed,” he said.

“I think I did my part in the first stint when I had tyres that were completely gone — I didn’t want to fight at that point, so I let Carlos by.

“The rest we’ll discuss it within the team. I don’t want to go into the details.

“It’s not about favouring one or the other; it’s about things that we have been told.

“I’ve already said too much, so I don’t want to go into the details whatsoever. It’s just frustrating when it’s like this, and it’s frustrating for me, but I can understand that nobody understands that.”

Sainz also found the race frustrating, believing more could have been on the table.

“We were ahead of Lewis before [the first] pit stop and it had been already a couple of laps that I was asking to pit, so it meant that I think we lost quite a lot of race time,” he told sky sports.

“At the same time there was this situation where I had to let by Charles. I lost a lot of time there. I’m not going to lie, and I’m not happy about that.

“What I’m not happy about is obviously the execution of the race. I think we can do a lot better than that.”

“The whole situation was a bit messy, and I’m the first one that is not happy, but it is what it is.”

The incident will now become a talking point over the final two rounds of the season, wen Ferrari will want to be fully focused on winning the title.

But this race also saw its swing against McLaren contained at 12 points.

McLAREN LIMITS THE DAMAGE AHEAD OF STRONG FINAL ROUNDS

McLaren’s worst qualifying performance of the year gave way to its second straight race without a podium appearance, the first time it’s gone home without a trophy twice in a row since the opening two rounds of the season.

It hasn’t been a good start to the final chapter of what could be a title-winning season.

Norris started sixth alongside former title rival Verstappen in fifth on the grid, but at no point was there any real competition between them such that Norris might have been able to prolong the title fight to Qatar.

Norris finished in the same place, with teammate Oscar Piastri up one position to claim seventh.

“The race was just pretty pants,” Norris said. “Bad pace. Bad grip. Bad tyre management. Just a poor weekend from us.”

McLaren over-estimated its race pace based on Thursday practice running. Partly that was because there was no running on the hard tyre, which teams assumed would be more robust and more resistant to graining that they ended up being in these conditions.

“In fairness, coming to Vegas we expected it to be a bit of a struggle,” McLaren boss Andrea Stella explained to Sky Sports. “In the race in the first two stints we were just fighting front graining and there was no way we could stop this phenomenon from happening.”

It was only some left-field set-up changes on Norris’s car in the final stint, primarily around the differential settings, that helped the Briton rescue any pace from the package, pushing him far enough of Piastri that he could make his late stop for the fastest lap bonus point.

“I think there’s not only the fact that we could damage limit but also important learning for us as a team in terms of how we cope with this phenomenon and with these conditions,” Stella said.

How concerned should McLaren fans be?

With two rounds remaining Ferrari is 24 points off the title lead.

Sine the start of the Americas leg of the season — Austin, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Las Vegas — Ferrari has taken 51 points out of McLaren’s lead, or 12.75 points per weekend.

Continuing on that trajectory would see Ferrari win the title by two points.

It’s that close.

But the upside is that next weekend’s venue in Qatar should be a much better match for the McLaren car and a much worse one for Ferrari, giving Woking a chance to open some breathing room again before a closely matched finale in Abu Dhabi.

“We know that the job is not finished,” Stella said of a championship many had assumed would be a walk for McLaren only two months ago. “We know that there’s hard work ahead of us. We go to the last two races fully focused, and we know that we have a job to finish.”

One wonders how important this scrappy weekend — for both teams — could be come the final race.