McLaren disqualifications and Verstappen title threat - F1 Q&A

The 2025 Formula 1 Drivers' Championship is heading for a thrilling climax after a dramatic Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Lando Norris thought he had extended his championship lead on McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri following his second-placed finish but the pair were disqualified for a technical infringement in the hours after the chequered flag.

Norris' lead is now 24 points over Piastri and four-time champion Max Verstappen, the winner in Las Vegas.

The Briton will win the title for the first time if he scores two points more than both Piastri and Verstappen in Qatar.

The race, at Lusail International Circuit, is the penultimate event on the 2025 calendar, with the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix following from 5-7 December.

Before the race at Lusail International Circuit, BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your latest questions.

It is obvious to everyone that Max Verstappen is the only clear threat to Lando Norris in the championship. Should McLaren pull the plug on Oscar Piastri to focus on Norris, and if they did, when? Or do we watch 2007 repeat itself? - Dan

Norris leads both Piastri and Verstappen by 24 points heading into the final two races of the season.

The only thing that can be stated definitively is that Norris has a significant mathematical advantage, but all three can still win the title.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella did not speak to the media after the Las Vegas Grand Prix, but he has been consistent all year in his insistence about the way the team will approach the championship with both drivers.

After the US Grand Prix, he said: "When it comes to having to make a call as to a driver, this will only be led by mathematics.

"I can recall at least 2007, 2010, in which you go to the last race and it's actually the (driver in) third (place going into the race) that wins the championship. So we're not going to close the door unless this is closed by mathematics."

That makes redundant any questions as to when McLaren should favour Norris if they were going to, because they have consistently said they won't.

But it also says that McLaren are fully aware of the possible scenarios.

Stella talks about "leaning on experience". Don't forget that he has taken this approach at McLaren after being directly involved in both those years he mentioned.

In 2007, he was race engineer to Kimi Raikkonen, as Ferrari were able to slip the Finn between the warring McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, despite being 17 points behind under the old system - the equivalent of 43 now - with two races to go.

And in 2010, he was engineering Alonso when Ferrari messed up their strategy at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi and lost the title when the Spaniard had started the race 15 points ahead of Sebastian Vettel, who eventually won it.

This year is neither 2007 nor 2010. It is a different season with an entirely different set of circumstances, the climax of which has yet to unfold.

I find it hard to believe how the driver who had 14 podiums and seven wins in the first 16 races, is now having a real struggle with achieving even fifth place. Is it a case of Oscar Piastri feeling the pressure and leading to a few really costly mistakes, or do the tracks really differ that much throughout the season? - Allegra

Piastri's slump in form since he won the Dutch Grand Prix to take his seventh victory of the season in 15 races is indeed remarkable.

I actually asked him on media day in Las Vegas whether he knew what had been going on, and this was his answer.

"Austin and Mexico were quite different to the other races that have not gone so successfully," he said.

"There, there was a clear pace deficit and something pretty fundamental that just wasn't working.

"The other races have just been a combination of different things going wrong.

"Obviously, Baku (where he crashed three times and jumped the start) was what it was. Singapore from a performance standpoint actually was pretty solid, just the race obviously didn't pan out exactly how I wanted.

"And even Brazil, the pace was good at points. The sprint crash didn't have a great impact on the rest of the weekend. There were some things resulting from that that were suboptimal for the rest of the weekend.

"So from a pace and performance point of view, Brazil was actually quite good, it was just that there were a lot of things that happened that meant the results weren't on the table.

"There was a couple of races where, yes, I needed to do some head scratching and work out what was going on, but the other races that have been tough have just been what some might say is a difficult world of motorsport."

That's a pretty good summary of what's been going on.

But there's another factor to bear in mind, in that Piastri is not driving in isolation. He is also being compared to his rivals, and in particular his team-mate.

There is absolutely no question that, after a shaky start to the season, Lando Norris has moved up a gear or two since the summer break.

Norris himself says the upward trend started before that - and it seems it began with the introduction of a tweak to the front suspension geometry in Canada aimed at enabling him to better feel the front of the car at the limit.

Up until the Dutch Grand Prix, the head-to-head qualifying stats between the McLaren drivers were weighted in Piastri's favour - but in terms of pure pace the margin was only 0.099 seconds.

Since Monza, Piastri has out-qualified Norris only once, in Singapore, and the pace gap is 0.226secs in Norris' favour.

This has come about through hard, focused work from Norris, as he explained in Las Vegas. It's now up to Piastri to respond.

Does the McLaren infringement in Las Vegas really affect performance of the vehicle? - Rob

The short answer is yes - that's why the rule is there.

The skid blocks inserted into the underbody 'plank' are there to ensure the team cannot run the car lower than the regulations intend.

Fundamentally, the lower a Formula 1 car is run to the ground, the more downforce it will produce, and therefore the quicker it will be.

Having said that, there is so much complexity to this scenario.

The floors of the current cars - which have so-called 'venturi' underbodies that generate downforce through 'ground effect' - were raised between 2022 and 2023 to reduce the likelihood of a phenomenon known as 'porpoising', which blighted a number of teams when the current rules were introduced.

This is where a car gets sucked to the ground as the downforce increases at speed to the point that the airflow under the floor 'stalls'.

This leads to a sudden reduction in downforce, so the car jumps up, only for the airflow to start working again, the car sucked back down until the same thing recurs.

Porpoising happens at a frequency of about 5Hz, leading to the car bouncing up and down rapidly at high speeds. This could be seen on in-car cameras in Las Vegas.

Over the past few years, as a consequence of the rule change and improved understanding of the current cars by teams, porpoising has become pretty rare.

So it's interesting that it recurred on the McLaren in Las Vegas. And that the car was subsequently found to have worn its skids too much.

Porpoising leads to the car hitting the ground more often, especially at the back, so it's hardly a surprise the car was illegal at the end of the race.

Inevitably, some will make the connection between the fact that the car was too low, and the return of what McLaren called "unexpected" porpoising - ie, was one a consequence of the other?

Having said that, it's hard to be definitive in saying that the fact that the car was running low enough to breach the measurements requirements definitely made it faster, especially in the race, because porpoising is not a performance-positive phenomenon.

But the rules are black and white. The car either complies or it does not. If it does not, it's illegal and is disqualified. The fact that McLaren insisted it was unintentional, and the FIA agreed, is not relevant.

As for the argument one sometimes hears that this is harsh on the drivers because it's not their fault, that's not relevant.

It's impossible for the team and driver to be separated - the driver is driving the car, after all, and benefiting from its performance.

Are any of the top three drivers in danger of a grid penalty for changing engine, gearbox etc? - David

Teams never reveal this sort of information ahead of time.

Both McLaren drivers and Max Verstappen would incur a grid penalty if they had to change an engine.

Verstappen has already had one - he has used five engines in total this season. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have not - they are on their maximum permitted allocation of four.

It's pretty safe to say that none of them will be planning on taking a new engine at this stage, with just two races to go. It would come only in the event of an unexpected problem.

Carlos Sainz is having a very good second half of the season, seemingly putting Williams team-mate Alex Albon in the shade. Is there a reassessment of either driver's level after this? What is causing Albon's struggles? - Eamon

Sainz is indeed having a good second half of the season, and he has produced two outstanding performances in qualifying in Azerbaijan and Las Vegas, to line up second and third on the grid.

But the battle between the Williams drivers remains close, even if there seems to be an odd phenomenon in that when one does well, the other does not, especially when the one doing well is Sainz.

It's not fair to say that Sainz is "putting Albon in the shade", nor that the British-born Thai is "struggling". Not as a definitive statement, anyway.

Yes, Sainz qualified third in Las Vegas while Albon crashed. But it was only the race before in Brazil that Sainz qualified last for the sprint, and was beaten by Albon in qualifying for the main race by more than 0.4secs.

Over the season, they are having one of the closest team-mate battles in qualifying - it's 14-13 in Sainz's favour on the head-to-head on merit, but the gap between them on average is 0.045secs in Albon's favour.

It's also worth saying that Albon is still three places and 25 points ahead of Sainz in the championship, despite those recent strong results from the Spaniard.

In short, they are both very high-quality drivers having exactly the sort of team-mate tussle in a midfield team one would expect.