LAS VEGAS — Formula 1 returns to Las Vegas this weekend, launching a final blitz of three back-to-back race weekends to finish the 2025 season and most likely crown a new world champion.
Heading into the race Saturday night under the bright lights of the glitzy Las Vegas Strip, Lando Norris has taken control of the championship fight after having crushed his rivals over the last two race weekends. While he cannot clinch the title in Sin City, a victory here could mean he has one hand on the trophy.
The affable British driver is 24 points ahead of fellow McLaren driver Oscar Piastri, who led in the standings for most of the season but has faltered lately. Still, Norris said he takes no comfort in the points gap and wants to win every remaining race, vowing not to change his approach.
“No, I still treat it as if I’m not in a championship. I’m just here to try and win this weekend. And that’s the mentality I’ll have,” Lando told reporters Wednesday in response to a question from NBC News. “Of course, when you’re on track, you make different decisions depending on risk levels and things like that. But I feel like my judgment of that generally is pretty good and pretty accurate. So I’m happy.”
With its unusually chilly evening temperatures, Las Vegas is already a wild-card track that scrambled the usual order last year and left McLaren struggling. And the potential for rain could throw another twist into the race — which some of the drivers are not looking forward to.
“Not fun at all,” said Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso, a two-time world champion. “It could be fun to watch but not to drive.”
While many of the drivers are dreading the possibility of racing in the rain, Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, who has struggled all season with a slower car, said he’d welcome it to shake up the order.
“It gives more chance for the others to actually f--- up,” the French racer said with a chuckle. “Sorry for my English.”
Max Verstappen, the reigning four-time world champion, is in third place, 49 points behind Norris. He’s mathematically still in the fight, but he conceded that his prospects of a record-equaling fifth consecutive title are out of his control.
“It’s a lot of points, so I’m not really thinking about it too much,” Verstappen said. “Because there’s also not much that I can do. We need a lot of luck now till the end to even have an opportunity.”
Verstappen said his approach is the “same as always.”
Norris has peaked at the right time after a roller coaster of a season — starting off as the championship favorite, staking his claim to it by winning the first race in Australia, then struggling with the car for months as Piastri matched or beat him.
“I had a pretty crappy beginning of the year,” he said. “But those difficult times certainly allowed me to focus. And I started to do a lot more work on all of those things to improve them, which has led me to be in this much stronger position that I am now.”
There are three Grand Prix races and one shortened “sprint” left in the season. Norris would win the championship even if he finishes second to Piastri in all four of them. That gives him a mental edge, with a chance to play the long game and take fewer risks. Norris said being first is “almost a safer bet,” as it means “staying out of trouble, staying out of the chaos behind.”
Piastri, who impressed the F1 paddock with his steely and consistent approach earlier in the season, has not finished on the podium since the Italian Grand Prix in early September — a drought that spans five Grand Prix and two sprints.
In the same period, Norris has scored two Grand Prix victories, one sprint win and another two podiums. It is a dramatic turnaround after a devastating mechanical failure at the Aug. 31 Dutch Grand Prix, which left him trailing Piastri by 34 points and caused some analysts to write off his championship hopes. That lead for Piastri has now morphed into a 24-point deficit.
“It’s going to be difficult now to try and win,” Piastri told NBC News during a Q&A with reporters in McLaren’s suite in the paddock. “But the mentality to go into each weekend and get the most out of it is still exactly the same.”
Asked whether he believes he needs to win every race from here, Piastri quipped, “It’d certainly help.”
Norris, who celebrated his 26th birthday last week, attributed the turnaround to his finding new mental strength throughout the season — or learning to “just ignore everyone that talks crap about you,” as he put it in Brazil. He conceded that the criticisms were negatively affecting him and that he “cared too much” — but he said he is now better at dealing with it.
He has also found his rhythm in the 2025 McLaren car after having struggled to adapt to its evolving characteristics earlier in the season, which led him to over-drive it and make costly errors. He has since cut out those mistakes, and the results show it.
In a separate interview away from the paddock, Norris said he's about to have “probably three of the biggest weekends of my life.” While he said he's excited to race in Las Vegas, he recalled that his McLaren struggled on these streets during the last two years, giving him “some of our worst weekends of the whole season.”
And while McLaren has won the team championship, there’s a heated three-way battle for second place among Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari. The constructors’ standings award the cash prizes, giving those teams an incentive to go all out in the final few races to claim the best spot.
The race weekend comes at a much-needed time for Las Vegas, whose lucrative tourism industry has declined in 2025 because of high costs and economic uncertainty. The F1 Grand Prix has delivered a major boost to the city in the last two years, with an estimated $934 million impact last year, said one estimate.
While attendance levels remain uncertain, this year’s Grand Prix has potential to attract fresh fan interest because the season offers the closest championship battle since the Las Vegas race debuted in 2023. Verstappen ran away with the last two titles.
Even as the influx of F1 fans will be a boost to the casinos and restaurants that rely on tourists, the race weekend is a mixed bag for locals who are unaffected by the Grand Prix and have to navigate road closures before and during the event.
“The inconvenience is, of course, if you want to drive around the Strip that is closed down,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said in an interview. “They kind of let things open in the day, and then they close it up at night. So it’s always a bit confusing, and people who live there get a little stressed out by it. But it brings so many people to Las Vegas, to Nevada. It’s a worldwide event. It’s a great event. We’re proud to host it, and it highlights our city and brings more tourism.”
