Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain drives during the Formula One Las Vegas Grand Prix auto race, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025 in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

LAS VEGAS — 2023 was the first year Formula 1 (F1) took to the streets of Las Vegas for a new United States race. Monaco suddenly had a rival for all the glitz, if not the glamour, of a spectacle in the pantheon of F1 venues. Sadly, the street setup was also quite similar meaning the race looked, to me, to be a bit of a bore, even if the events surrounding and supplementing the race were spectacular.

When I sat down to actually watch the racing in 2023, I was surprised at how enjoyable it actually was. That enjoyment repeated in 2024 with another exciting race taking place on track. Rainfall and cold temperatures this year showed how difficult it was to keep this era of F1 car going on track in Vegas.

Qualifying on Saturday night was thrilling to watch. Many people within the realm of F1 say the world’s best 20 drivers are in the sport, and others outside of the sport scoff a bit at the sentiment. Anyone who watched qualifying in Vegas would be hard pressed to doubt the sheer talent of these 20 drivers as they fought off aquaplaning and tried compensating for exceedingly poor visibility.

Lewis Hamilton, seven-time World Champion in F1, has had a very difficult transition to Ferrari this season, and added to his year’s dubious record book a first-time last place qualification, purely based on pace. He couldn’t make the full wet tires work on his car at all and had the slowest qualifying time of all 20 drivers, which left his fans shaking their heads in dismay.

All the drivers were struggling, though, which could be seen in their overall lap times. During the practice sessions, drivers were able to make it around the Las Vegas track with times as quick as 1:33.602. The first qualifying session saw a best lap time of 1:53.144 and the pole position lap by Lando Norris was 1:47.934. In a sport where lap times are measured down to a thousandth of a second, a nearly fifteen second difference between practice and qualifying is huge.

Unfortunately, almost all the excitement of the race weekend happened before the race. As the lights went out and the race was underway, Norris drove his McLaren cutting sharply across the nose of second place Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, trying to keep Verstappen from getting the inside line into the first corner. Norris was successful, but ended up going wide and lost the place to Verstappen. George Russell also got his Mercedes past Norris in the next few corners.

A little further back, Liam Lawson drove his Racing Bulls car deep into the first corner and had too much momentum to get his car turned correctly. He bashed into the side of Oscar Piastri’s McLaren, sending them both wide and letting Lawson’s teammate Isack Hadjar through for fourth place. While the incident between Lawson and Piastri was looked into, no further action was taken.

This is one of three areas where stewards played a large part in the title fight over the Las Vegas weekend. Every F1 race has a different group of stewards who are charged with looking at any perceived transgressions throughout the weekend and deciding what punishment, if any, should be meted out. While the differing members each weekend help impartiality, they also breed inconsistency.

For accidents, stewards can give a penalty to the transgressor, but there is never really any compensation to the person who was run into. If we quickly rewind to Brazil two weekends ago, Piastri made a move very similar to Lawson and had a result nearly identical. Piastri went into a corner with two other cars and ran out of room. He tried braking early, but locked up, a collision became inevitable. Piastri hit Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes, who in turn ran into Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, and the latter was out of the race.

The aftermath of the accident looked bad, with a car out of the race, but it was a racing incident, nothing more. Leclerc himself actually came out and said Piastri didn’t deserve the harsh time penalty the stewards gave him. Back to Vegas, Lawson banged wheels with Piastri and actually damaged his own front wing in the process which put him back to last place for a bit. That aftermath didn’t look so bad because the person who was hit carried on and the one who was responsible paid a price.

Optics changed the perception of the stewards between these two incidents. There isn’t anything much they could do to help Piastri anyway, but it irked me Lawson got away with something when Piastri was punished rather harshly in a previous and very similar incident.

Antonelli was penalized five seconds for his rolling start at the beginning of the race, when cars are supposed to be stationary, and this demoted him from fourth to fifth, pushing Piastri up a position at the end of the race. After some great pit stop strategy, Piastri helped his case a little bit to stay in the title fight, but he could not manage to make his way past Antonelli in the race at all.

The penalty for Antonelli was the second instance of the stewards playing their part in the outcome. As opposed to the inaction towards Lawson, the penalty on Antonelli was clear and necessary. The fact it granted Piastri fourth place and two more points is the most interesting part, however, since that lessened the blow of Piastri’s teammate Norris getting second place and continuing to expand his lead.

At the end of the Las Vegas race, Norris led over Piastri by 30 points, and Verstappen was another twelve points behind. However, the stewards had one more eventful find that altered everything. In the post-race inspection, the McLaren cars both had plank wear that exceeded the rules.

A quick explanation of the technical rules here… there is a plank made of a glass-reinforced plastic composite material called Permaglass, that starts a race at a thickness of 10mm. By the end of the race, the plank must still be at least 9mm thick. As the cars race around courses, particularly street ones, they bottom out in the places where the road undulates, and sparks will fly as the planks make contact with the ground. This is somewhat inevitable, but teams can adjust the ride height of their cars to prevent this from happening too much.

McLaren had both of their cars too low to the ground as measurements of their planks were undeniably below the 9mm threshold. This led to both of the McLaren cars being disqualified from the race. Norris lost his second place and 18 points, and Piastri lost fourth place and 12 points. It is important to note the stewards also said, “the FIA noted that it strongly held the view that the breach was unintentional and that there was not a deliberate attempt to circumvent the regulations” on the part of McLaren.

Interestingly, that means Norris now has a twenty-four-point lead on Piastri and Verstappen both. Many were counting Verstappen out when he was more than 100 points behind the leaders, but I’ve always said to not underestimate the four-time World Champion who is now within one race win of taking the lead for the first time this season.

With only a maximum of 58 points left in the two remaining races, the title fight is more up in the air than ever. Teams have a very quick turnaround to get from Las Vegas to Qatar for the final Sprint Weekend with the feature race on Sunday, Nov. 30, at 11 a.m. Eastern Time.