The past two calendar years have been rather kind to McLaren. The conclusion of the 2023 season saw the team rocket up the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship standings to finish fourth following a difficult start to the season. Last year the team secured the Constructors’ Championship at the final race of the season, and this season not only did McLaren wrap up the Constructors’ Championship with six races remaining, but drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are the two main contenders for the Drivers’ Championship.
Yet, the site of this week’s Grand Prix has been an unpleasant one for the team.
The Las Vegas Grand Prix has proved challenging for McLaren, dating back to the inaugural race in 2023 when, during McLaren’s rise up the standings, Norris crashed during an early stint and Piastri finished tenth. Last year the team arrived in Las Vegas with Norris hoping to catch Max Verstappen at the top of the Drivers’ Championship standings, but the McLaren duo finished sixth and seventh, ending the British driver’s championship dreams.
Despite Norris’ strong run of form — the McLaren driver won the Mexico City Grand Prix and then took wins at both the F1 Sprint Race as well as the main event the São Paulo Grand Prix — the McLaren driver conceded Wednesday night that Sin City might be “trickier” than recent races.
“So, from the last two years, it’s certainly been the hardest race of the year that we’ve had,” began Norris in the FIA Press Conference Wednesday night. “So my expectations are not to the same level as Mexico, Brazil, where we’ve been performing very well for a good amount of years.
“But we’ve had an excellent year and we’ve improved in places that we’ve struggled in the past. So I’m certainly coming in with more confidence than in previous years, but not the same amount of confidence as going into the past few races that we’ve had. So you never know. Expectations are still high. I’m still coming here to win and to want to repeat the last few weekends that I’ve had. But I think it’s going to be trickier for sure than the last couple.”
However, Norris did outline that some lessons from last year’s race have given him more confidence for this weekend.
“Alright. I mean, because we were so bad, I just ended up trying as much stuff as I could,” said Norris in response to a question from David Croft. “And it was more just – actually, I’m not going to say. I’m fighting for a lot, so I want to reveal the least amount possible. But I think we were so bad that you just get to a point where you try a lot. I mean, it’s probably not too difficult for people to figure out. But yeah, it’s a long race, a lot of laps, and we were struggling consistently with the same thing. So I was just experimenting with a lot – experimenting with my driving, with driving styles, approaches to the car, which is not always easy, trying to figure out how the car likes to get driven because it changes every weekend, and with the toys and things like that. So it was more… Yeah, it took us to the end of the race, the final stint, to really try and figure out what was a bit better. We found pace.
“Like, even if you look at the race trace now, you can quite easily see the final stint from me was a lot more in line with Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes.”
To that point, here is the telemetry data from Norris’ race last year, courtesy of F1 Tempo. Norris began the race on the medium tire, pitted on Lap 9 to switch to the hard tire, pitted again on Lap 30 for another set of hard tires, before a late pit stop on Lap 48 for a set of softs to close out the race:
On that first stint on the hard tires, Norris was making his way around the Las Vegas Strip Circuit with laps in the 1:38 range. During that second hard tire stint, his laps came down into the 1:36 range, with a few laps in the 1:35s.
“I think Lewis [Hamilton’s] last stint last year was pretty incredible. So we’re still quite a long way off what the Mercedes was, but we looked more raceable, let’s say. It was just too little, too late. I think we’ve learned from that,” added Norris.
Hamilton finished second in last year’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, using a two-stop strategy where he started on the medium tire before running two sets of hard tires, a similar strategy to Norris but without the final stint on the soft tires.
Comparing his telemetry data to what we see from Norris above, you can see how Hamilton was indeed quicker on that first stint but Norris pulled level with Hamilton’s “pretty incredible” last stint, even pumping in a few laps that were faster:
For example, on Lap 44 Hamilton came in at 1:35.662 while Norris’ lap was a 1:35.527. Lap 42 was even better for Norris, who clocked in at 1:35.601 compared to a 1:35.884 for Hamilton.
It was not enough for Norris last year.
As for what Norris might have learned, digging deeper into his telemetry data from last season could uncover some answers. Here is his throttle data from Lap 22, when he posted a time of 1:38.444:
Now compare that to Lap 42:
The second “dip” the two graphs above is the entry into Turn 3, illustrated here by the white dot on the track map:
On Lap 22, Norris lifted completely, while on Lap 42 Norris only pulled the throttle back to 15%. That allowed Norris to carry more speed at that point on Lap 42, in comparison to Lap 22 (209 kph versus 200 kph).
When you put the throttle data from the two laps side-by-side, you can see that Norris often stayed on the throttle longer on Lap 42 (in orange) than he did on Lap 22:
Something similar played out in his braking patterns when comparing Lap 22 to Lap 42, which you can see here. Again, Lap 42 is in orange:
Norris was braking later on Lap 42, and in F1, you want to be the last to brake.
But could the lessons from that final stint be enough this weekend?
“Doesn’t mean this year’s going to be mega, but it’s certainly given us a direction to go in,” concluded Norris.
