After all the debate about fair application of Papaya Rules and which of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri is really McLaren’s No. 1 driver, the answer, as it is turning out, is neither of them. One race is a fluke, two is coincidence, three is when you really start considering that the car and driver have real pace, and four is when you start taking the continued failures of the championship leader very, very seriously. On Sunday’s United States Grand Prix, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen turned what was a funny hypothetical into a real question: Can he actually win the Drivers’ Championship this year?
Let’s start with the math. After the Dutch GP on Aug. 31, the first race back from the F1 summer break, Verstappen was 104 points down from Piastri in the standings, and 75 points down from Norris. He has now won three out of the four races since then. The one race he did not win, the Singapore GP, he lost to George Russell in a Mercedes, but outplaced both McLarens. Over that span of four races, he has clawed back an eye-boggling 64 points, with 23 of those points gained during this weekend’s race alone. That leaves him just 40 points down from the championship leader with five races to go, two of those sprint weekends.
