Why Norris is right to be worried about Verstappen's Brazil GP turnaround

"Well done, nice race, well executed. Good job all weekend. Not a big enough gap for my liking, though – so definitely something to look at."

Thus Lando Norris decanted his thoughts into the airwaves after winning the Brazilian Grand Prix from pole position, his tone betraying what was dominating his thoughts: that Max Verstappen, having started from the pitlane, had contrived to finish on the podium.

Lando really could do to learn a lesson from stage magicians. Even the most time-served of prestidigitators must learn to affect some semblance of excitement and surprise when they pull a rabbit from the hat, even when doing so for the second or third time that week. A grand prix win is something to be savoured, not an occasion upon which to publicly mop the fevered brow and ponder aloud how close it all came to heading south (unless you're Nigel Mansell, but I digress).

The Sao Paulo race represented an opportunity for McLaren to inflict pain upon Verstappen, who theatrically declared his championship challenge "over" after struggling with his car throughout practice, sprint qualifying, the sprint race, and grand prix qualifying – from which he was eliminated in the first segment.

That it failed to do so was partly a factor of Red Bull's resourcefulness and Verstappen's pugnacious brilliance. But at least some of it was self-inflicted as Oscar Piastri made slightly heavy weather of the weekend, needlessly incurring a penalty without which he would probably been ahead of Verstappen at the chequer.

It would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall during McLaren's review of the Brazilian weekend. Could Norris have done any better? Having claimed pole position for both races, and won them, the immediate answer is no.

Norris produced the perfect weekend but wasn't exactly jumping for joy post-race

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

Could McLaren have done better strategically? That is a question many are asking, since Verstappen's unlikely four-lap tenure in the lead of the race in the final quarter presented the possibility of him staying out on the same set of tyres and "occupying the crease" – to use cricketing parlance – until the end.

Whenever circumstances of a race weekend put the quickest drivers on very different strategies, there is always an element of shoulda-woulda-coulda after the fact. Hindsight affords crystal clarity.

In this case, the tyre data and the stopwatch dictated Verstappen's final stop to take on soft tyres: Norris, having eked out 20 laps on softs, had moved to a set of mediums and was catching Verstappen at up to a second a lap. The auguries for Max staying ahead for almost 20 laps did not look good, especially since he had already completed 20 laps on the same set of medium-compound tyres.

"They showed a performance and a pace in the race that is meaningful – that without the situation yesterday in qualifying, I think Verstappen would have been there for the victory" Andrea Stella

"No, we don't think it was winnable," said Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies. "We would probably never know where we would have finished, but obviously it's a discussion the guys had on the pitwall. At some stage you need to make the call, and the call was made. I think it gave us a chance to have a very strong go at the podium. Ultimately we got it.

"Maybe one lap more you would get a P2. No, I don't think there was any way you could have kept a P1 if you just looked at the tyre deg and where you were."

Viewing the race through the prism of hindsight is complicated by several factors. Verstappen's elimination in Q1 left him with two sets of new mediums and three sets of new softs, whereas none of the frontrunners had any new softs at their disposal and, at best, one new set of mediums. The hard-compound tyre was considered highly unsuitable, and ultimately was deployed only by those with few other options at their disposal given what was known at the time: the Aston Martins, the Red Bulls, and Esteban Ocon. Yuki Tsunoda, eliminated in Q1, was starting at the back of the grid, while Ocon and Verstappen were starting from the pitlane.

Verstappen gave up the lead for his final pitstop, but Red Bull didn't believe he could keep Norris behind him

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images

Circumstances then enabled those who realised the hards were a waste of time to get off them: a safety car period precipitated by Lance Stroll failing to notice Gabriel Bortoleto, and swiping the Sauber into the barrier on lap one. Tsunoda got off the hards almost immediately but Red Bull's decision-making apropos Verstappen was tempered by Max's rapid progress thorough the field.

Ultimately its hand was forced by Max picking up a puncture, either in the debris from Bortoleto or the various collisions at Turn 1. Here again you could say there was an element of fortune: had he been running further ahead on track, Max would have been less likely to encounter this debris, and the virtual safety car enabled him to have an inexpensive pitstop onto one of those sets of new mediums.

Picking his way through the field, though, was all Verstappen brilliance. Here was where he made McLaren's life difficult. But would it have been so challenging without those early neutralised laps?
 
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was unequivocal after the race: "Today they definitely took advantage of having new tyres, new medium, new medium, new soft.

"But at the same time they showed a performance and a pace in the race that is meaningful – that without the situation yesterday in qualifying, I think Verstappen would have been there for the victory."
 
Throughout the early stages of the weekend, Verstappen had been complaining about low grip and a rear end which was striking the track surface too frequently – such that the car was undriveable, particularly in the second sector, where Interlagos is at its bumpiest. Set-up changes the team made between the sprint race and qualifying for the grand prix made the car less unpleasant through sector two, but no faster, while rendering it gripless through sectors one and three.

Red Bull set-up changes between the sprint race and grand prix qualifying backfired

Photo by: Nelson Almeida / AFP via Getty Images

How much of that lack of grip was the same problem many of the other runners found themselves facing unexpectedly on Saturday afternoon is a question for the ages. But there is no doubt the subsequent changes Red Bull made to the car, as well as fitting a new power unit, proved transformative.

So that is what will preoccupy McLaren as it faces a Las Vegas Grand Prix where it underperformed last year – Norris and Piastri qualified sixth and eighth and finished a distant sixth and seventh. With four rounds to go and Verstappen 49 points behind Norris – a good margin, but still not safe – it cannot afford to be complacent.

"Vegas last year was one of the most difficult races," said Stella. "We had difficulties with the behaviour of the tyres in qualifying, because we were not fast, and behaviour of the tyres in the race, because we had a lot of graining.

If the 2025 Brazil Grand Prix shows one thing with utmost clarity it is that Max Verstappen and Red Bull cannot be counted out

"We had also some aerodynamic issues when we tried to offload the rear wing, we saw that we were losing too much efficiency and we also had a bit of an issue with the set-up of the car, trying to compensate for this graining and some of the understeer. So the review from Vegas last year gave us a lot of information to try and find a way to improve. I would say that from a tyre point of view, from an aerodynamic efficiency point of view and from a car set-up point of view, we know in which direction we should change compared with last year.

"Will it be enough to be competitive now? We will only see it in Vegas, but definitely we took actions in response to what we saw last year because certainly the performance wasn't satisfactory."

If the 2025 Brazil Grand Prix shows one thing with utmost clarity it is that Verstappen and Red Bull cannot be counted out when there is any margin still remaining.

The threat of Verstappen is keeping McLaren on its toes going into the triple-header decider

Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images