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Amid the excitement surrounding the Las Vegas Grand Prix, McLaren's lead driver is maintaining a level head about his chances of claiming his maiden drivers' championship.

The British driver currently has a 24-point advantage over teammate Oscar Piastri and is ahead of Max Verstappen by 49 points, with only up to eighty-three points available across the remaining trio of races. But, after staging a extraordinary comeback from a significant deficit his teammate after the Dutch Grand Prix in the summer, Norris is focused on executing with the clinical precision that propelled him to the top of the championship.

"Things can quickly turn in the other direction again even though I don't want it to," he stated. "That's racing, as we all know. Sometimes you also have luck. You can end up unfortunate. No matter what happens. It's not worth getting excited or dwelling on it. I continue to view it as something that's quite far away."

Norris has discovered his peak performance at a crucial moment—after difficulties with the car in the first part of the season—at the same time that his teammate has shed the controlled, almost perfect ease that previously made him appear to be a champion in waiting. Notably, Norris kept a impressive level of equanimity all along, insisting even in the face of challenges—such as his retirement from the Zandvoort race—that he would stick to his gameplan and work every outing with the same relentless attention to detail. This approach has yielded results.

All the while, the team have gone to no little effort to try to maintain a fair competition for their pair of racers, and it has at times been a rather difficult experience, most notably at the Italian Grand Prix when the squad instructed the Australian to surrender second place to his teammate after he had fallen behind due to a delayed tire change. Some fans were unhappy with what was seen as McLaren needlessly manipulating their drivers.

Norris has won the last two grands prix, in Mexico and Brazil, and was jeered on the podium at both, yet he remained unfazed. "When you're on top, a lot of people want to bring you down. They don't want to see you winning. I see it as a positive sign," he said.

"It just makes me laugh. While standing on the podium in Interlagos, I really loved it. The experience was quite enjoyable. At last you sense that you are achieving success.

"I don't mind, as long as I win. As long as I believe I'm doing it the right manner, and I think that's the case, so long as I am confident I am dedicating hard work into being who I am and those kinds of things, then I am not concerned about the rest of it."

Las Vegas, meanwhile, needs to be mastered, and it is a circuit ideal for the McLaren. It shares similarities with Montreal and Azerbaijan: minimal aerodynamic grip, cool temperatures, and slippery surfaces. These are the only two tracks in the current championship where McLaren have failed to secure at least one top-three finish, and the leader was cautious once more about their chances this weekend. Yet, his objective in the short term is straightforward: finish in front of his teammate and the championship tally he needs will follow.

Practice Sees Varied Results for Championship Rivals

Charles Leclerc led the leaderboard in FP1 on what was still a dusty and very low-grip surface. The Williams racer was second, with Verstappen fourth, Norris sixth, and the Australian in eighth. In the more indicative evening session of second practice, the Briton was fastest ahead of the Silver Arrows of the Italian rookie, with Piastri down in fourteenth; though, the session was interrupted for nearly the last third of track time to inspect a suspected unsecured manhole cover at turn 17.

This problem is taken seriously on a temporary track where, at the inaugural Las Vegas GP staged in 2023, a loose manhole smashed into Carlos Sainz's Ferrari, severely damaging it and causing the session to be aborted.

The German Team Announce Ownership Sale

Mercedes have confirmed that their team principal Toto Wolff has sold a 15% stake in his holding company, representing a five percent ownership in the squad, to American billionaire the cybersecurity magnate. Kurtz is the chief executive and creator of the digital protection firm CrowdStrike. Wolff will stay on as boss and may receive up to £230 million from the deal, with the Brackley-based outfit having been appraised at £4.57bn, a record for an F1 team.