Red Bull mock McLaren with ‘how to not get disqualified’ jab

Red Bull have aimed a playful jab at F1 rivals McLaren over their double disqualification at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Lando Norris finished second behind dominant race-winner Max Verstappen with teammate Oscar Piastri coming home fourth, but both McLarens were thrown out of the Las Vegas race results for excessive skid block wear.

Both MCL39 cars were found to have wear beyond the minimum thickness on the rearmost skid block, which has a 9mm threshold as per F1’s technical regulations. Norris’s was worn down to 8.88mm, with Piastri’s measured at 8.74mm.

Their exclusions mean that Norris’s championship advantage is down to 24 points over Piastri and Verstappen with two rounds remaining in Qatar, which features a sprint race, and Abu Dhabi.

Red Bull couldn’t resist twisting the knife over McLaren’s blunder, with their sim racing Instagram account sharing a short video explaining “how to not get a DQ” with the caption “just a bit of friendly advice”.

The official EA Sports F1 Instagram account commented on the reigning esports champions' post: “We do not endorse this savagery (funny tho)”.

One fan said: “That’s absolutely simply lovely roasting”.

McLaren investigating costly mistake

McLaren argued mitigating circumstances, including higher than expected porpoising, and lack of practice time, were behind the plank wear, and apologised to both their drivers for the mistake.

"We apologise to Lando and Oscar for the loss of points today, at a critical time in their championship campaigns after two strong performances from them all weekend," said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.

"As a team, we also apologise to our partners and fans, whose support means so much. While this outcome is extremely disappointing, we remain fully focused on the last two races of the season.

"We were found in breach of Article 3.5.9 of the Technical Regulations, which requires a minimum of 9mm skid thickness. Car 4 was found in breach by a maximum of 0.12mm of the rearmost skid and Car 81 by a maximum of 0.26mm of the rearmost skid.

"During the race, both cars experienced unexpected, high levels of porpoising not seen in the practice sessions, which led to excessive contact with the ground. We are investigating the reasons for this behaviour of the car, including the effect of accidental damage sustained by both cars, which we found after the race, and that led to an increase of movement of the floor.

"As the FIA noted, the breach was unintentional, there was no deliberate attempt to circumvent the regulations, and mitigating circumstances also existed."