LAS VEGAS — McLaren arrived at the Las Vegas Grand Prix expecting a tricky weekend on the bumpy street circuit.
What it did not expect was a post-race reversal that would wipe out its strong on-track showing.
The team initially crossed the line second and fourth after a weekend in which Lando Norris took pole on Friday night and recovered from an early mistake to finish second on the road.
But everything changed in the hours after the race, when post-race technical checks found the skid planks on the underside of both McLaren cars had worn below the required minimum thickness, triggering their disqualification.
That left McLaren with zero points from a weekend when Max Verstappen — the reigning world champion — dominated the race and collected the maximum 25 points for victory.
In an instant the fight for the 2025 world championship shifted: what had looked like a comfortable lead suddenly narrowed.
Norris had celebrated on the podium — spraying champagne in front of the Bellagio fountains — believing his margin over teammate Oscar Piastri had increased to about 30 points.
With that buffer he could have clinched the title in Qatar if it had stayed above 26 points.
The F1 championship before and after
DRIVERPOINTS BEFORE DSQPOINTS AFTER DSQ
Norris
408
390
Piastri
378
366
Verstappen
366
366
A galling technical breach from McLaren — which had been closing on the possibility of a constructors-and-drivers sweep — now leaves Norris 24 points clear at the top. Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen are level behind him, meaning the championship fight has reopened.
The first signs that McLaren could face technical trouble showed up in the closing stages, when Norris’ pace suddenly dropped. His race engineer, Will Joseph, had been instructing him to lift — short for easing off the throttle to save the car or fuel — at Turns 5, 11 and 17. Still, lap times fell from the low 1:34s to around 1:37 in the final laps, and a five-second gap to Max Verstappen stretched to about 20 seconds by the finish.
On the penultimate lap Joseph told Norris, “You can reduce what you’re doing a small amount. The fuel looks OK now.” Norris later said there were “just some issues with the car, the team was telling me on the radio. Just had to back off a bit.”
He acknowledged at the news conference that he needed to speak with the team to understand the cause. “It was more just annoying listening to what they were telling me to do, which was losing a lot of pace,” he joked. “(It) certainly didn’t help in the chance to try and attack Max a bit more.”
Crucially, it wasn’t just Norris experiencing the slowdown — both McLaren cars showed symptoms. That pointed to an underlying car setup or floor issue rather than a single-driver or fuel problem. Running cars very low to the ground increases ground-effect downforce but also raises the risk of increased skid-plank wear, especially when track conditions and practice opportunities (limited by red flags or weather) don’t allow teams to fine-tune ride heights during sessions.
The FIA enforces strict technical regulations on the wear of skid planks — the wooden-like boards fitted to the underside of every F1 car to limit how low teams can run their floors. If those skid planks wear below the mandatory 9mm thickness, the car is liable to be excluded from the results.
When the FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer issued a bulletin saying the measured thickness on the McLaren cars was below the minimum, the outcome was clear — these measurements form a black-and-white technical breach and the subsequent stewards’ hearing, which began late evening, was short.
Teams routinely push ride heights down to increase ground-effect downforce from the car’s floor, but that increases the potential for excessive skid plank wear.
After Lewis Hamilton was excluded for skid wear in China earlier this year, teams became particularly cautious, often raising ride heights at some circuits to avoid a repeat — a move that can cost lap time.
Las Vegas introduced another variable: a notably bumpy street layout. Several drivers warned that the Strip circuit was unusually rough, increasing vertical movement and the risk of plank wear.
Fernando Alonso said the track was “extremely bumpy at the limit of being safe to race,” a factor the stewards and teams had to consider.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella’s planned media session was delayed and then cancelled after the FIA’s bulletin and the formal summons.
Measurements on both Oscar Piastri’s and Lando Norris’s cars recorded values just short of the 9mm limit — 8.88mm on the right-hand front and 8.93mm on the right-hand rear — and, according to the device manufacturer, those readings are accurate to within 0.001mm. The rear skid blocks were remeasured in the stewards’ presence and remained in breach.
McLaren advanced several mitigating circumstances at the hearing: unusually high porpoising and vertical movement at this year’s las vegas street circuit that would accelerate wear; reduced practice running because of weather and red flags that limited opportunities to measure skid wear during practice sessions; and a suggestion that accidental damage could have caused a movement of the floor.
The team also noted the breach appeared less severe than earlier exclusions this season.
The FIA said it “strongly held the view that the breach was unintentional and that there was not a deliberate attempt to circumvent the regulations,” but technical regulations are clear: a breach of the skid-plank thickness rule results in disqualification, and both cars were excluded from the results.
For Lando Norris, the disqualification is a gut punch to his bid for a first world championship.
In the news conference before the exclusion was announced he played down the immediate effect, saying, “Nothing feels different now, even though that is the opportunity I’m entering into.” His bigger worry was McLaren’s pace relative to Red Bull and his inability in the race to mount a sustained challenge on Max Verstappen.
The numbers underline the shift. Norris led Verstappen by 49 points before Las Vegas and appeared to reduce that to 42 with his second-place finish; after the disqualification his lead stands at 24. With 58 championship points still available across the remaining rounds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, what once felt comfortable now looks precarious.
Qatar, a circuit expected to suit McLaren and especially Oscar Piastri, will now be a critical test. If Max Verstappen — who has recovered momentum after his strong run in Austin — wins there, McLaren could face the agonizing choice of prioritizing one driver over the other in the closing races to protect a diminished advantage.
Norris still holds the best position going into the final rounds — a 24-point lead is meaningful — but the margin is thinner and the season’s final two races, ending in Abu Dhabi, could yet decide the championship.
Teams, drivers and fans will now be watching closely as the title battle tightens.
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