Why Verstappen ‘laughed’ at McLaren ‘come and get’ him message to Norris

Between Lando Norris’ first lap aggression and McLaren’s call to “get Max”, Max Verstappen was given all the motivation he needed in Las Vegas – and it didn’t even come from Red Bull.

Verstappen lined on the grid in Sin City in second place, having missed out on pole position by three-tenths in the wet.

Max Verstappen ‘laughed’ at Lando Norris and McLaren

But by the end of Turn 1, it was the reigning World Champion who was leading the grand prix, and he never looked back.

Verstappen lined up second to championship leader Norris and made a good start that the Briton tried to over off in an aggressive – perhaps overly so – lunge to the left as he crowded Verstappen towards the wall.

Norris, though, overshot his mark and ran wide into Turn 1 to open the door to his championship rival.

From there, just wheels ahead, Verstappen didn’t look back.

He returned the favour as he squeezed Norris to lead the race with George Russell also ahead of Norris. Verstappen built a lead of almost six seconds over the chasing Britons when they changed position on Lap 35, Norris blasting past Russell.

Norris asked McLaren if they want him to “overtake” Russell. The reply was emphatic: “Overtake, we want to go get Max.” He promptly did so to applause from the McLaren garage.

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He was, however, five seconds down on Verstappen, who was told by GP: “Lando has been told to come and get you.”

But instead of closing in on Verstappen, Norris dropped time lap after lap.

Initially it was a tenth here and there, but at the end of those 15 laps, the gap between Verstappen and Norris was over 20 seconds, as Norris battled a mystery issue with his McLaren. Analysis from PlanetF1.com’s resident data expert Uros Radovanovic revealed that there was only one realistic explanation: Norris was fuel critical.

Verstappen revealed that “come and get you” message was inspiration to put his foot flat.

“Yes, I heard that too, of course,” he told Viaplay. “I have to laugh about it. It only motivates me. It only works adversely. It only motivates me to defend even harder if he would have come.

“That helped at least. Otherwise you might see it in the first stint. I think we had good speed on the hard tyre. But passing it is another thing.

“He aggressively closed the door. So I had to count to ten. One, two, ten. And of course I was braking way too late, so it turned out well.”

Asked about those 10 seconds in the press conference, he added: “Yeah. I mean, that’s what you should do to cover off the inside.

“But I think it’s very easy to get caught out with where you have to brake also, because normally in the start, you leave the grid and then you look in the mirror. But here, it’s almost like you don’t have a lot of time to look in the mirror because you immediately have to brake again. And it’s quite slippery anyway. So yeah, I guess that’s what happened.”

“We just managed it superbly,” he added of his grand prix. “I had to push a little harder on the tyres than I wanted to start because George came to start.

“But after that we just constantly did no crazy things. While the other cars behind me were sometimes very aggressive and started to push, we kept it constant. That’s why the tyres healed well.”

With two grands prix and a single Sprint remaining this season, Verstappen trails Norris by 24 points after both McLarens were disqualified from the grand prix.

Verstappen is taking it day by day.

“I think that’s the better approach. I mean, it’s still a big gap. But, you know, we always try to just maximise everything that we’ve got. And this weekend, that was first. And yeah, the upcoming weekends we’ll again try to win the race.

“And at the end of Abu Dhabi, we’ll see where we end up. But I’m very proud of everyone. You know, we’ve had a really up and down season and tough times, but also really beautiful moments. And we learned a lot throughout the whole season, and that’s also very valuable for the upcoming years.

“So that’s something that we just have to cling on to and [we’ll] just try to improve even more to come back stronger for next year, to put up a fight from the start of the year in the championship. But we’re enjoying it now, and then we’ll see next week what we can do again.”

Read next: Las Vegas GP: Viva Max Verstappen as Lando Norris pays for Lap 1 mistake