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Despite all hype around the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Lando Norris is keeping a calm demeanor regarding his prospects of claiming his first world title.

Norris presently has a 24-point advantage over fellow McLaren driver Oscar Piastri and leads Max Verstappen by nearly fifty points, with just up to eighty-three points available across the remaining trio of events. But, after pulling off a extraordinary comeback from a significant deficit his teammate after the Dutch Grand Prix in the summer, Norris is focused on performing with the clinical precision that lifted him to the top of the standings.

"It can easily go in the other direction once more as much as I hope it doesn't," he stated. "That's motorsport, you know. Sometimes you also have luck. Other times you end up unlucky. No matter what happens. There's really no point getting excited or dwelling on it. I still do see it as something that's quite distant."

Norris has discovered his peak performance at a crucial juncture—having struggled with the vehicle in the opening half of the campaign—while Piastri has lost the disciplined, almost perfect ease that previously made him seem to be a champion in waiting. Notably, Norris maintained a remarkable level of equanimity all along, asserting despite challenges—like his withdrawal from the Dutch GP—that he would adhere to his strategy and work every outing with the same unwavering focus on specifics. It has yielded results.

Meanwhile, McLaren have worked hard to try to preserve a fair competition for their pair of racers, and it has on occasion been a rather torturous process, most notably at the Italian Grand Prix when the team instructed Piastri to cede the runner-up spot to Norris after he had fallen behind because of a slow pit stop. Some fans were unhappy with what was seen as the team unnecessarily manipulating their competitors.

The championship leader has won the last two races, in Mexico City and Brazil, and was booed on the podium at both, yet he remained unfazed. "When you're on top, many people try to bring you down. They don't want to see you succeeding. I see it as a good thing," he said.

"It makes me laugh. While standing on the winner's stage in Brazil, I really enjoyed it. The experience was quite satisfying. You finally sense that you are achieving success.

"I don't mind, provided that I come out on top. If I believe I am competing the correct way, and I think that's the case, so long as I am confident I am dedicating hard work into remaining true to myself and those kinds of things, then I am not concerned about the rest of it."

Las Vegas, on the other hand, needs to be mastered, and it is not a track suited to the McLaren. It shares characteristics with Montreal and Baku: minimal aerodynamic grip, cool temperatures, and low grip. They are the only two tracks in the current championship where McLaren have been unable to secure a single podium place, and the leader was cautious again about their chances in Nevada. Yet, his task in the short term is straightforward: end the race in front of Piastri and the points he requires will follow.

Practice Sees Mixed Results for Title Rivals

The Ferrari driver led the times in FP1 on what was still a sandy and extremely low-grip surface. Alex Albon was runner-up, with Verstappen fourth, the McLaren ace in P6, and the Australian in eighth. In the more representative evening session of second practice, the Briton was quickest ahead of the Silver Arrows of the Italian rookie, with Piastri down in fourteenth; though, the practice lost almost all of the last third of running to check a suspected unsecured drain cover at turn 17.

This problem is taken seriously on a temporary track where, at the first Nevada GP staged in 2023, a loose drain cover smashed into Carlos Sainz's Ferrari, heavily harming it and causing the practice to be aborted.

The German Team Announce Stake Transaction

The eight-time constructors' champions have revealed that their boss the Austrian executive has sold a fifteen percent share in his investment firm, equating to a 5% share in the squad, to American billionaire George Kurtz. Kurtz is the chief executive and creator of the digital protection firm CrowdStrike. Wolff will stay on as boss and could earn up to £230 million from the deal, with Mercedes having been valued at £4.57 billion, a record for an F1 team.