Lando Norris has a serious Max Verstappen problem
Max Verstappen did Lando Norris like a kipper at the start of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
After getting the McLaren driver all hot and flustered on the formation lap, Verstappen pounced when Norris was drawn into a mistake at the first corner. That crucial passage of the race revealed as much about Lando’s inferiority complex as Max’s genius…
How Max Verstappen got inside Lando Norris’s head at Las Vegas Grand Prix
A version of this article originally appeared in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the 2025 Las Vegas Grand Prix
Why did Max Verstappen make such a concerted effort to mark himself as a tough and uncompromising competitor in his earliest days in F1?
Taking every single opportunity that presented itself to launch a bold, late-braking move down the inside?
Moving unpredictably on the brakes in defence against the Nico Rosbergs, Sebastian Vettels and Lewis Hamiltons of this world, drawing all three world champions into mistakes?
Twitching suddenly in eighth gear on the straight at Spa just as Kimi Raikkonen went in for the kill, leaving him with no option but to back right off or risk eating tree?
Precisely for moments like the start of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
It messes with the minds of other drivers. Gets them thinking. Overthinking. Keeps them guessing. Second guessing.
Driving unnaturally to combat whatever it is they think Max might – or might not – be about to do.
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Would Lando Norris have attempted to cut off any other driver so aggressively – uncharacteristically so for him – off the line in Las Vegas?
Sitting there on the grid, eyeing those five red lights, Max knew he was going to try his luck down the inside at the first corner.
More importantly, though, he knew Lando knew it too.
And just as crucially, Lando knew that Max knew that he knew.
Hence why Norris overdid it, chopping Max too sharply to leave himself on the dirty side of the track, braking too late and at too acute an angle to make the corner.
And, just like that, Lando was spooked and off the road he went. The bogeyman had struck again.
That came just moments after Norris became distracted – too preoccupied with what Verstappen was up to – at the end of the formation lap, leaving the McLaren completing only three burnouts on the approach to his grid slot on this cold Vegas night, none as aggressive as the five completed by Max.
Rent free, you say? Such terms, best left to the anti-social media mob, risk crossing into the territory of disrespectful.
But certainly it is accurate that Norris fears Verstappen more than any other driver.
Understandably so, you might say. He wouldn’t be the only one.
But not when that fear is so palpable – so detectable and easily exploited by an opponent – in racing situations.
Much has been made in this column over recent months, especially following his victories at Monza and Interlagos, of the idea that Verstappen remains the best driver out there even as he stares in the face of defeat in the title race.
Yet here was a snapshot of just how far advanced Max remains compared to the opposition, including the world champion elect.
Be in no doubt that the limitations of his Red Bull is the only thing set to prevent Verstappen from making it five championships in a row in 2025.
It was at this race last season that Verstappen secured a fourth consecutive title, finally ending Norris’s hopes a few weeks after breaking his spirit in Brazil.
The 2024 title race, as Norris failed to make much of an imprint on Verstappen’s points lead despite having the faster car for much of the season, came to be symbolised by those famous photographs of Lando and Max back in 2013.
They portray a very young Norris meeting a teenage Verstappen almost twice his size. Fitting.
The world championship is likely to change hands in Qatar this coming weekend and Max’s count will almost certainly be paused, if not quite stopped, at four.
Yet what applied this time last year still applies now.
Explained: Lando Norris’s complaints about Max Verstappen over team radio
With cold temperatures in Las Vegas, drivers were requested to perform as many as five burnouts at the end of the formation lap to generate rear-tyre temperature and boost their chances of an effective launch.
While Verstappen completed five burnouts, Norris completed only three – none as aggressive as the Red Bull – as he became preoccupied with the gap his rival was leaving to the polesitter, leaving the McLaren driver at an immediate disadvantage off the line.
Although drivers must be ‘no more than 10 car lengths apart’ under safety car conditions, the sporting regulations state only that ‘the formation must be kept as tight as possible’ on the lap to the grid.
Norris was heard reporting Verstappen’s approach to the formation lap to his McLaren team over team radio, claiming his rival was “way over” the permitted allowance of 10 car lengths.
The full exchange went as follows:
Norris: “Yeah, he’s taking the p*ss with how big of a gap he’s leaving. It’s way over the allowed allowance.”
McLaren: “Yeah, we see that Lando.”
Norris: “Yeah. Come on! He’s just taking the p*ss here. You can’t do this. It’s 10 car lengths, no?”
McLaren: “Yeah, we see that Lando.”
Reader reaction: Does Lando Norris live in fear of Max Verstappen?
BillyBob: Norris will always stand in Verstappen’s shadow.
Dray: “And just as crucially, Lando knew that Max knew that he knew” – Max is a master at getting into his opponent’s head.
Alan: Lando’s move off the line highlights that although he has shown improvements in his mentality and appears to be better at handling pressure there is still an air of fear and self doubt lingering beneath the surface.
Even when he talks about Max in interviews it feels as if he is trying to convince himself that he is as good as Max.
DerJoul: I am curious if the chosen one at McLaren will keep his head straight at the next race. Something in me is saying that Lando will break and need a new pair of underwear.
Swann Kruger (in reply to DerJoul): The pressure clearly has doubled after that DSQ.. Norris will definitely being feeling it.
xpd: Mr Harden doesn’t want to use a term like ‘rent free’ because it would be ‘disrespectful’ and then proceeds to speak about Norris in a boorish and pompous manner that goes way beyond disrespectful. Sheesh.
Remove DRS Button: “Rent free, you say? Such terms, best left to the anti-social media mob, risk crossing into the territory of disrespectful.”
Gee the label machine is getting a good workout. The whole part about Max is just using different words to say Max is rent free in Norris’s head lol.
All season they’ve been on about Max when McLaren have clearly had the fastest car and RBR had the 4th. There’s 0 reason to talk about him up if he’s not in the picture.
Ron Peal: Lando is showing that he doesn’t have the right mindset. Prost would have let Max have the lead… would have let him win the race…
All Lando needed to do was finish somewhere high in the points. If he had settled for 3rd or even 4th the odds are his plank wouldn’t have been worn down below the legal limit and he would have kept more of a lead. Then drive like that the following races and he would have still had the WDC.
But driving like he is will only increase the odds of him crashing out and now if he crashes out his title hope will be over. He should have driven smart and not driven like he did.
Eleanor Rigby: Blando will probably win the championship – Max would need to win both races and the Sprint, and Lando could come 2nd in all of them and still win. The only hope Max has is a Lando DNF, or perhaps McLaren’s performance falls massively off with this new plank-wear clampdown.
Still – I dont think his stock will actually rise that much if he does – in fact the dialogue will probably be about how much heavy weather he made of the WDC in a dominant car.
Max, on the other hand, will probably lose the WDC – but his stock’s risen even further after this season.
Charles Clough: Max would have won regardless of Lando’s first corner mistake. No way would Lando have risked his championship lead by scrapping with Max. Max had nothing to lose.
Stephan (in reply to Charles Clough): huh?? he risked it all in the opening few meters trying to put max in the wall..
Remove DRS Button: Dare I say it again, yeah obviously I will: Rent free 24/7.
Race didn’t even start and he cracked with Max on his tail.
British bias is on show also. This would be condemned, chastised and criticised for until the next race if this were Max doing the move at the start that Norris did.
Joshua (in reply to Remove DRS Button): Norris did nothing illegal. You are allowed one defensive move.
Norris just can’t multitask and block Max as well as remembering his braking point and the quickly approaching T1.
Max was very clever to immediately open the corner as Lando blocked him, allowing him to stay on track and carry more speed, whilst Lando didn’t.
Eleanor Rigby: Clearly Blando doesnt even know the rules – there’s no stipulation about the number of car lengths on the formation lap.
If Max was building a gap, Blando could’ve slowed down. Instead he chooses to do what he does best – moan.
Danny: I love how Max is inside his head. On the warmup lap he already got him set up, the start finished it.
The DSQ will be firmly in his mind going to Qatar. Like Brazil last year, all Lando will think about is Max, and like Brazil he will start making mistakes.
Couple that with diminished performance from the need to raise the car, and with 33 points on offer Max could be VERY close to Lando come Abu Dhabi.
Read next: Could McLaren’s Las Vegas DSQ seal Oscar Piastri’s role as No.2?