Verstappen comeback means the title is all but sealed, but where did it all go wrong for Lando Norris?

The weekend which had initially sparked real hope of the title within Lando’s grasp, with Max lining up 17^th on the grid following a rather disastrous Sunday morning qualifying and Norris having won Saturday’s sprint, ended in despair for the man from Bristol as he watched Verstappen sail off into the sunset -with what looks to be the Driver’s Championship with him. A red flag may not have made matters easy in São Paulo, but Lando didn’t exactly cover himself in glory either as he, yet again, cheaply gave up the lead before they got to turn two, and fell even further following the safety car restart later in the race. This effectively ended his chances of a race-winning Sunday evening.  With the title battle now looking to be over as the paddock heads to Las Vegas for the start of the triple header that rounds off a fantastic 2024 season, we can look back on key moments where Lando lost the title, as it certainly wasn’t just Brazil where things turned sour for the British team.

Fast starting Red Bull set the course for Verstappen’s championship

Much has been made of Max’s start to the year, as pointed out by Martin Brundle: “Max winning seven of the first 10 races pretty much put him out of reach really,” which was dominant as barring his mechanical DNF in Melbourne, the opening seven rounds of the World Championship, was very much the Verstappen show. He hit a record equalling 8 poles in row, drawing level with Ayrton Senna in a run that spanned from Abu Dhabi 2023 to Imola this year. This, coupled with excellent Grand Prix performances as Verstappen and Red Bull dominated in the Bahrain season opener and followed it up with further 1-2s in Jeddah and Japan. This meant he had built a 52 point lead over Lando by the time the Miami Grand Prix, in which Norris grabbed his first Grand Prix victory, came around. This has meant both McLaren and their driver have had a mountain to climb in chase of both titles, and it proved to be a mountain they could not overcome.

Whilst some will argue that Norris has done a bad job of bringing the points total down, as it now stands at 62 points, it must be said that a gap of such a size is rarely, if ever, overturned but similar events have happened. Max himself proved this by doing it to Leclerc in 2022, previously Vettel did in 2012 and as Kimi Raikkonen managed to in 2007 (point conversion is the equivalent of 43 points with two rounds to go in modern system). So history shows it can be done, however, all three of those drivers have one important thing in common; they had all been in a title fight in other years, and Norris hasn’t had the luxury. So that is one factor that counted against the Briton in his search for his first World Championship, whether he uses this year to catapult himself forward next year however, remains to be seen.

Norris simply lacked the killer instinct

The aforementioned experience factor certainly played a role, but in the sink-or-swim world that is Formula 1, Norris has unfortunately sunk in 2024. In a winner-takes-all fight against someone like Max Verstappen, you must be willing to do whatever it takes to do so, and at times it seemed as though Max had the mental edge over his papaya counterpart. Much focus has been put on the seemingly growing strain between the two friends. Now their relationship seems to have hit a new low with Norris speaking this week to F1TV: “I don’t know, I’m split” adding “but for now I still respect Max, I think he respects me, but maybe ask me again at the end of the year.” This follows on from comments made following the pairs clash at the Austrian Grand Prix this year, which ended Lando’s chance of a win as he wasn’t able to finish the race – whilst Verstappen extended his championship lead by 10 points. To Max this was seen as a victory, as he may have lost the race, he won the point battle against Norris.

To add to this lack of a killer instinct, rather infamously now, Lando seems incapable of starting well, it all started with losing the lead from pole in the Chinese Sprint to Lewis Hamilton, then he went onto lose Grand Prix poles before the end of lap one in Catalunya, Hungary, Zandvoort, Monza, COTA and most recently Brazil, with Singapore being the outlier as he dominated from beginning to end. This catalogue of poor starts, amongst other issues off-the-line, has lead to difficulties in races where they should never have arisen and have summarised his season which whilst at times utterly fantastic, has been too often lacklustre for someone competing for the top step of the podium.

McLaren’s poor strategy proves costly

In a quite shocking lack of success, McLaren last tasted victory in the constructors as far back ago as 1998, also owing to their disqualification in 2007 following the ‘Spygate’ scandal, and haven’t won a Drivers title since Lewis Hamilton won his first championship trophy in 2008. They also went almost a decade without a race win, before Daniel Ricciardo expertly gave them a win at Monza in 2021. As such, many fans and pundits have put their indecision, of which they are so often accused of, when it comes to strategy down to lack of experience for those within the team, while the juggernaut that Red Bull represent have won 13 titles combined since Hamilton’s 2008 title.

However, in a sport like Formula 1, such excuses only last for so long before they become tired and it reached a breaking point following their safe bet to put Norris on the same red banded set of tyres as Lewis in Silverstone this year, leading to a poor third place finish, when he had been leading the race earlier on having overtook both Mercedes.

The following round in Hungary they faced trouble too, but this time in the form of team orders as poor strategy calls meant Lando undercut teammate Oscar Piastri as the Australian had before looked on for a first win, and it ended up in a mess as McLaren resorted to almost emotional manipulation to get Lando to swap positions, which left a mark on Oscar’s debut win that didn’t need to exist.

They later failed to execute a two-stop strategy in Monza which lost the team victory to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Overall, poor decisions has cost them unnecessarily, which has left their chances in the Drivers title bleak and even put their position as Constructors leader in doubt, with Ferrari hot on their tail going into the final three races.

Ferrari and Mercedes threw themselves into the mix

Although it remains true that the talk for much of the season has been Verstappen and Red Bull versus Norris and McLaren. Mercedes’ mid-season purple patch of three race wins in a row, alongside a resurgent Ferrari has meant it hasn’t always been so black and white from weekend to weekend with seven drivers having won races this season, more than double the amount when compared to 2023, which had just three unique winners in Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz.

At times where Red Bull were uncompetitive compared to McLaren, such as in Monaco, Britain, Monza, Baku, COTA and Mexico, Mercedes and Ferrari were there to take points off of Lando Norris, whereas earlier in the year it was very much a case of Lando vs Max for a portion. So other teams growing in competitiveness, has meant on some weekends it has been a four-team battle for victory on Sunday which has spelled trouble for the Woking based outfit.

The best example of this was perfectly exemplified in Monza, a weekend in which Red Bull were miles off of front running pace and Max even struggled to outpace his teammate at times and ended in 6th place on merit, which is an awful result for someone competing for a title and on another day it could have meant a momentous 18 point swing in Norris’s direction, but a combination of Leclerc’s speed and poor execution from Norris meant he only finished third and behind his teammate who looked the quicker of the two on Sunday and as a result he only gained seven points on his rival; which was less than he needed to catch Max by Abu Dhabi.

So was it bad luck, Norris to blame or the ‘Max Verstappen Factor’?

I think you could conclude it was a mix of all three, as on many occasions you could blame the team or poor timing for unneeded issues like in Britain or Hungary, however Norris had his moments such as key errors at starts and going off track in Brazil in the midst of difficult conditions. But most importantly it should be said this season has shown Max Verstappen, on current form anyway, to be the best driver in the paddock as he puts his mix of experience and talent to put Norris down a peg or two.

However, most likely there will be no dominant start heading into the 2025 season for Max so it’ll be wide open yet again, and with Lewis in the red of the Scuderia anything can happen. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how Norris deals with this setback, because he is without a doubt extremely talented, but can he put it all together and win it all? That, as I said, remains to be seen.