Did Max Verstappen antics goad Lando Norris into critical error?

Max Verstappen seemed to goad Lando Norris into throwing away the lead at the start of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Verstappen claimed a dominant victory in Sin City ahead of championship leader Norris, who was later thrown out of the race results after his McLaren was found to have excessive plank wear.

Norris initially retained the lead from pole position after aggressively chopping across the front of Verstappen's Red Bull, but the four-time world champion snuck past when the Briton misjudged his braking point and ran wide at Turn 1.

Verstappen appeared to wind up Norris on the way to the grid, after hanging back and leaving his rival to sit waiting for longer. Norris was heard complaining to his McLaren race engineer, Will Joseph, about the Dutchman’s antics on the formation lap.

“Yeah he’s taking the piss with how big of a gap he’s leaving. It’s way over the allowed allowance,” Norris reported at the final corner.

Norris added: “Yeah, come on. He’s just taking the piss here. You can’t do this. It’s 10 car lengths, no?”

Whether Verstappen was intentionally plotting to maximise the time Norris’s tyres were cooling, or just simply trying to annoy him, we do not know. But whatever it was worked.

Following the race, Norris admitted he “f***ed up” the start but insisted he lacked the outright pace to challenge Verstappen for the win.

“I messed up Turn 1 - it was pretty poor from me,” Norris said. “I braked too late. So yeah, it was all on me, pretty poor from myself.

“But even if I came out in P1 out of Turn 1, we were not quick enough today. Same as Brazil.

“Max has done a very good job and the Red Bull is very quick. They deserve the win today. They were in another league compared to us.

“So a bit of a shame that we didn’t have more pace, but we’ve got to try and improve a bit more.”

McLaren unsure if Verstappen contributed to Norris error

McLaren refused to go as far as to claim that Verstappen’s actions had influenced Norris into making his critical mistake.

“Instinctively, actually, I thought at the pit wall to tell Will to say like, ‘Tell him to stay calm’,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told Sky Sports F1. “But we don’t know whether that was an influence or not.

“He was trying to defend the position, but I think on the inside he found much less grip than what he anticipated and he went a little bit long.

“It’s racing, we lost the position, we regained one on track with Russell, but I’m not sure we could have kept the lead with the pace Verstappen exhibited.

“I think we have to sort of acknowledge that Red Bull and Verstappen today were a little bit faster.

“Obviously it would have been interesting to see if we were in condition to take the lead at the start and somehow use the clean air that you have when you get in the lead.

“But honestly Max was faster than us in pretty much all conditions.”

Norris holds a 24-point advantage over McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri and Verstappen heading into the final two races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.