Las Vegas GP drama: Lando Norris accuses Max Verstappen of cheating formation lap rules. Unseen team radio reveals Lando Norris accusing Max Verstappen of mocking him.

The start of the Las Vegas Grand Prix was anything but calm, with a fierce wheel-to-wheel battle between Lando Norris and Max Verstappen at the braking point for Turn 1. In those opening moments, the British driver tried to make life difficult for the Dutchman, but the attempt proved unsuccessful. Verstappen neutralized the attack, outsmarted his rival, and took the lead of the race. This tense phase, as revealed by team radio messages that were not broadcast on television, had actually begun even before the lights went out, when Norris accused Verstappen of “mocking him” during the formation lap.

The alleged move from the Red Bull driver came just moments before Lando Norris’s mistake at Turn 1—an error that handed Max Verstappen the race lead and ultimately the victory, his sixth of the season. That win also helped reduce the championship gap to Lando Norris to 24 points, with two rounds remaining in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

A troubled day

Lando Norris’s mistake was followed—despite finishing second on track—by a disqualification for excessive plank wear on his McLaren, a penalty that also hit Oscar Piastri. More than a simple error, Lando Norris’s misjudgment was somewhat self-induced. He placed himself in the worst possible position to defend against Verstappen into Turn 1, choosing to cut across the track to fend off the Dutchman. The move left him on the dirty side of the circuit with a compromised angle for the corner, forcing him to brake very late and inevitably run wide into the escape area.

According to some team radio messages not shown on TV, Verstappen had already unsettled the British driver before the start with an unusual approach to the formation lap. Due to the cold Las Vegas temperatures, drivers were instructed to perform multiple burnouts to warm up the tires and improve their launch off the line.

An aggressive Verstappen

During the formation lap, Max Verstappen performed five burnouts, while Norris did only three. Regulations state that drivers must not be “more than 10 car lengths apart” and that “the formation must be kept as tight as possible.” According to Lando Norris, the Dutchman had exceeded that limit. Here is the full exchange:

Norris: “He’s just taking the p**s with the gap he’s leaving. He’s way outside the tolerance.”
Joseph: “Yes, we see that, Lando.”
Norris: “Come on! He’s just mocking us. He can’t do that. It’s 10 cars, isn’t it?”
Joseph: “Yes, we see that, Lando.”

The tension—combined perhaps with better tire warm-up—allowed Max Verstappen to get a stronger launch than Lando Norris. It was enough for his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, to congratulate the four-time world champion for how he managed the opening moments: Great job, Max. You kept your cool, said the Red Bull engineer.

Whether deliberate or not, the mind games worked to perfection. Max Verstappen converted pole into victory, Lando Norris lost crucial points through both his mistake and the later disqualification, and the 2025 title fight will now go down to the wire in the desert and under the Yas Marina lights.