Las Vegas GP talking points: Max Verstappen on F1 title brink, fresh FIA controversy, and driver market uncertainty

Formula 1 hits the neon-lit streets of Las Vegas – the self-styled entertainment capital of the world – for the second time this week in the first leg of a triple-header of race weekends that close out the 2024 season.

After a dramatic start to life on the F1 calendar for the Las Vegas Strip Circuit last year, the sport returns with both world championship titles yet to be settled this time round amid what has proved an increasingly-competitive and unpredictable season.

While the championship battles are again set to dominate the narrative on track this weekend – with the sport’s most coveted prize potentially being settled in Sunday’s 6am race – F1 also heads Stateside for the final time this year with fresh off-track controversy centred around its governing body, the FIA, and lingering questions around a 2025 driver market that still isn’t absolutely settled just five weeks before Christmas.

Here’s why it should be quite the weekend on The Strip…

Verstappen’s first chance to join F1’s exclusive club

Three weeks after his virtuoso wet-weather win from 17th on the grid in Brazil, Max Verstappen heads to Vegas on the verge of joining one of Formula 1’s most revered and exclusive group of drivers.

Only five – Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, Juan-Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel – before now in the sport’s 74-year history have become world champion at least four times.

Verstappen has his first chance to make that six this weekend.

Sixty-two points ahead of McLaren rival Lando Norris with only 86 left to play for across the season’s final three race weekends, Verstappen will be world champion by breakfast time in the UK on Sunday morning unless the British driver outscores him in the race by at least three points.

While there are numerous permutations for how the Red Bull can close it out at the first attempt, Verstappen knows that if he simply finishes ahead of Norris in Vegas he’ll be champion again. And even if he doesn’t, he could still take the title with two races to spare unless the McLaren driver gets his deficit down to no more than 59 points.

Not that sealing his fourth consecutive championship before next week’s penultimate round in Qatar is an absolute shoo-in for Verstappen by any stretch of the imagination.

While the Dutchman was undoubtedly without equal in the treacherous wet conditions of Sao Paulo, question marks remain over Red Bull’s dry-weather pace relative to McLaren – and Ferrari too, on the evidence of recent months, something which certainly gives Norris reasonable hope of at least delaying his rival’s coronation by one more week.

That Verstappen can still achieve such a historical title in Las Vegas carries some irony, though, given he was heavily outspoken about F1’s newest and most highly-anticipated venue a year ago.

The Dutchman said he felt like a “clown” during the glitzy ceremony that opened the event and then described the race weekend as a “99 per cent show, one per cent sporting event”.

He did, however, seem to warm to the the spectacle by the end of the weekend after claiming his 18th win of the season in the race, with his celebrations including a post-race rendition of ‘Viva Las Vegas’ on Red Bull team radio.

What chance he’ll be singing ‘We Are the Champions’ on his cool-down lap this Sunday?

McLaren still in constructors’ control

While the two hours and six minutes of the Sao Paulo GP may have done terminal damage to Norris’ title hopes, the race didn’t actually turn out especially badly for what has always remained McLaren’s No 1 target for this year – winning the Constructors’ Championship.

Aided by their one-two in the Saturday Sprint, McLaren actually left Brazil seven points further ahead of nearest pursuers Ferrari than when they arrived, with their advantage over the Italian team now standing at 36 points.

Third-placed Red Bull did pull five points back on them but Christian Horner admitted it had still been something of a missed opportunity for his reigning champions to get themselves right back into play after Sergio Perez again failed to score. They sit 49 points back and surely won’t now retain that teams’ title unless Perez finds a miraculous breakthrough in form to back up Verstappen over these next three weeks.

With a maximum of 44 points available to a team in Las Vegas and 103 still to play for in the two rounds that follow in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, it’s too early for McLaren to wrap anything up this weekend, but they can certainly move a big step closer to a first constructors’ crown since 1998 with another strong points-scoring weekend for Norris and Oscar Piastri.

The real move of significance in the standings from Interlagos actually came further back in the pack as Alpine catapulted themselves from what stood as a dismal ninth into a more respectable sixth – their finishing position of 2023 – thanks to an unexpected double podium that yielded 35 points – well over double their haul from the year’s first 20 rounds.

Should the Enstone-based team now stay sixth over the season’s final three races then they will receive in the region of $25m more in prize money than they would have done for coming ninth. But keeping that position is certainly not guaranteed given Haas, more regular top-10 finishers this year, are just three points back and RB only five adrift.

What Alpine’s big leap forward has done is leave Williams marooned in no-man’s land in ninth place, 27 points behind RB and 17 ahead of point-less Sauber, who now have just three races left to avoid the second nul points of their 32-year history with little over a year to go until they morph into the Audi works team.

How will Vegas fare second time round?

It’s said that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas but there was deliberately nothing kept quiet about last year’s inaugural event in Sin City, which was billed as the biggest in Formula 1’s history.

You don’t shut the iconic Vegas Strip so F1 cars can race down it without wanting to make a global statement, that’s for sure.

With so much focus on them before even a wheel had been turned, the new event made unwanted headlines for organisers and F1 on a fraught opening day of track running when Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari sustained major damage by running over a loose drain cover within the eight minutes of first practice starting.

That inaugural session was suspended, and then not restarted, with Practice Two delayed by what turned out to be two-and-a-half hours while officials carried out a full inspection and attended to the many other manholes located around the rest of the track.

With the whole weekend scheduled to run late in the Vegas evening each night, those delays meant the second session ended up starting at 2.30am. To make matters worse, with the delays having gone beyond the contractual obligation of circuit staff, the session played out without fans in the grandstand with spectators, many of whom were naturally disgruntled, told to leave before cars hit the track.

It felt like the event was at an early crisis point yet – two days later – by the end of an action-packed and, unusually for a street circuit, overtaking-friendly race the mood had almost completely changed.

So how to follow all that in year two?

In track terms, the 3.85-mile street layout which winds past some of Vegas’ most famous hotels and landmarks – including the 1.24-mile flat-out blast down the main section of The Strip – remains unchanged after last year’s successful debut.

And while none of F1’s official support series have been added to the bill, there will be another racing category in action for the first time with organisers adding the Ferrari Challenge to the schedule for fans.

Off the track, with Vegas aiming to combine sport with a festival-like feel, the live entertainment is again star-studded, with Ludacris, Alesso and OneRepublic all to play at the fan T-Mobile Zone across the weekend on a stage which sits in front of Vegas’ high-tech Sphere, the $2.3bn, 366-foot immersive music and entertainment arena which projects an array of images onto its wraparound external LED display.

What’s going on at the FIA?

As F1 race director and the person who signs off on track safety, Niels Wittich was a key player in resolving last year’s drain-cover dramas, but the German will not be present in Vegas this time around after his sudden and unexpected exit from one of the sport’s most crucial roles last week.

Wittich may have been a relatively low-key figure compared with his two full-time predecessors, Michael Masi and the late Charlie Whiting, since taking on the position from the controversial former in 2022, and there has certainly been sustained scrutiny over decision-making from both Race Control and the stewards office for a while now, but his exit was still surprising – particularly given there are three races of the season to go.

Although the short FIA statement confirming the official’s exit suggested he had “stepped down” in order to “pursue new opportunities”, Sky Sports News understands the 52-year-old was effectively sacked amid strains in his relationship with FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem.

Comments attributed to Wittich in other media reports have painted a similar picture about his exit not being his choice. Rui Marques, who has served as race director for both F2 and F3, has been handed the reins as replacement.

Even before that story broke, the governing body and its president had already been central in the other major story to emerge during the sport’s three-week break in races – the hard-hitting public statement issued by the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association in which it criticised Ben Sulayem’s handling of the recent swearing controversy and the FIA’s issuing of fines for rules transgressions.

“We urge the FIA president to also consider his own tone and language when talking to our member drivers, or indeed about them, whether in a public forum or otherwise,” read the statement from the GPDA, a body which includes all 20 drivers.

“Further, our members are adults, they do not need to be given instructions via the media about matters as trivial as wearing of jewellery and underpants.”

Neither the FIA nor the under-fire Ben Sulayem is yet to respond publicly to the GPDA’s salvo and, while formal comment may still not emerge from either during the Vegas weekend, the episode was already set to be a major topic of discussion when the drivers face the media on Thursday even before the similarly-seismic Wittich news broke.

Amid reports of more upheaval at the FIA since then, world motorsport’s governing body certainly remains under heavy focus heading in to F1’s now-highest-profile race.

Perez stays for now as almost half of grid begin end-of-season farewells

As mentioned above, any expectation that Verstappen’s brilliant win at Interlagos might truly catapult Red Bull back into the thick of the Constructors’ Championship fight did not materialise after Perez finished only 11th in the sister car.

Perez had started three cars ahead of his penalised team-mate on the grid but spun in the race’s early stages before losing out on the final points to Liam Lawson and Lewis Hamilton. It was a second non-scoring Grand Prix in succession for Perez after his woeful home event in Mexico, when he finished 17th, and meant he scored just eight points in total across the Americas triple header.

The 34-year-old’s sustained struggles in the RB20, which have now lasted for months, mean his prospects of starting what should be the first season of the two-year contract extension he signed for 2025-2026 back in June appear to be receding all the time, particularly with Lawson scoring points twice in his first three races back in the RB and Red Bull bosses known to evaluating Williams’ Franco Colapinto for a seat one of their two teams.

Yet, contrary to the latest round of speculation after Brazil, Perez is set to see out at least the final three rounds of this season in what he will hope will not prove his early Red Bull swansong.

There are already seven drivers for who the season-closing triple header definitely marks the closing chapters with their current respective teams.

Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton’s long and illustrious Mercedes career will be over as far as racing activities go in just under three weeks’ time and while his somewhat cryptic comments from both in and out of the car amid his own wretched weekend in Brazil led to wild speculation he could perhaps call an early halt to his year before that, the seven-time champion will be racing as scheduled in Vegas and surely be determined to finish his Silver Arrows career on some semblance of a high in the USA and then over in the Middle East.

Carlos Sainz, Esteban Ocon, Nico Hulkenberg, Kevin Magnussen, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu – whose Sauber exits were formally confirmed in the days after Brazil – are the other drivers soon to be heading for pastures new.

Sky Sports F1’s live Las Vegas GP schedule

Thursday November 21
4am: Drivers’ Press Conference

Friday November 22
2am: Las Vegas GP Practice One
4.30am: Team Principals’ Press Conference
5.45am: Las Vegas GP Practice Two
7.15am: The F1 Show*

Saturday November 23
2.15am: Las Vegas GP Practice Three*
5am: Las Vegas GP Qualifying build-up*
6am: LAS VEGAS GRAND PRIX QUALIFYING*
8am: Ted’s Qualifying Notebook*

Sunday November 24
4.30am: Grand Prix Sunday: Las Vegas GP build-up*
6am: THE LAS VEGAS GRAND PRIX*
8am: Chequered Flag: Las Vegas GP reaction*
9am: Ted’s Notebook*

*also live on Sky Sports Main Event

Formula 1 returns with the Las Vegas Grand Prix this weekend, live on Sky Sports F1 where Max Verstappen could seal the championship. Stream the final three F1 races and more with a NOW Sports Month Membership – No contract, cancel anytime

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