Win or bust: Verstappen's final chance at F1 2025 title - What to watch out for in Las Vegas GP

The Las Vegas Grand Prix returns for its third edition with a different tone from the one that defined its glittering debut two years ago.

The flashy lights and celebrities will still be there, but beneath the spectacle lies a weekend carrying real sporting weight, and potentially decisive championship consequences.

For Max Verstappen, back-to-back defeats to Lando Norris have left him 49 points adrift, and while the mathematics say the title is still alive, the reality is that the Strip may represent his final realistic chance to make a dent.

McLaren‘s form makes that task challenging, but the memory of its disastrous 2024 showing in Vegas offers Verstappen a sliver of hope.

Meanwhile, Ferrari arrives under an unwelcome spotlight of its own making.

Here’s a look at the main storylines ahead of the Vegas weekend.

Verstappen’s final chance to make a dent

Up until the Mexican Grand Prix, Verstappen appeared to be a real threat to McLaren in the championship, but the Mexico and Brazil races put a decisive stop to his momentum, and with it, a somewhat realistic shot at the title.

After losing out to Norris in the last two races, Verstappen’s small chances are hanging by a thread, and Las Vegas may already feel like last-chance territory for the Dutchman.

With the Red Bull driver staring at a significant deficit – 49 points to Norris – and with McLaren coming into the antepenultimate round as the form team, the Strip presents one of the few remaining variables that could disrupt Norris’s momentum.

With only 58 points available after Vegas, Verstappen will need McLaren to endure a really bad weekend to stand a chance in the two remaining races.

Crucially, however, Vegas is a circuit where McLaren looked its weakest last year.

If there is a venue, of the three remaining, where McLaren’s 2025 strengths might be blunted, it is Vegas.

While Red Bull’s 2025 package has been quite inconsistent, the team has historically thrived on low-grip circuits where improvisation and tyre sensitivity often override pure aerodynamic superiority.

If Red Bull can keep its tyres alive in the cold and extract straight-line efficiency, Verstappen might be able to emerge on top and live to fight another day.

Las Vegas won’t decide any titles, but it may decide whether Verstappen remains a participant in the championship story.

Can McLaren avoid a 2024 repeat? 

Momentum-wise, there is no doubt that Norris arrives in Las Vegas as the championship favourite after two dominant wins in a row.

But the problems McLaren has endured to try to put a competitive showing around the Strip are creating a question mark over what’s possible for the Briton and team-mate Piastri this weekend.

Last year’s event exposed the limits of the team’s package more starkly than any other venue: ultra-low grip and plunging temperatures combined to create an unworkable operating window.

McLaren oscillated between understeer and oversteer, never finding a balance that allowed either driver to compete meaningfully. The end result was sixth and seventh places.

“I think it was our worst race last year,” said Norris after Brazil. “So I’m not really looking forward to it. We’ve been trying to work quite hard on improving those things. We know Mercedes were incredibly strong there last year, as well as Red Bull and Ferrari. I think we were at the bottom of those four. So yeah, we’ll wait and see.”

Twelve months on, McLaren has taken several steps to address the weaknesses from last year, some of them having already contributed to making the car a better package from the start of the year.

The MCL39 has greater mechanical compliance for low-speed sections as well as improved tyre energy generation in cold conditions, both factors that could help McLaren stay the team to beat.

If McLaren can avoid a repeat of last year’s problems, Las Vegas could be the venue where the team ensures the title will go to one of its drivers.

Mercedes’ double-edged role

Mercedes arrives in Las Vegas carrying a disruptive potential that could play a role in the championship fight between McLaren and Verstappen.

George Russell‘s victory – and Lewis Hamilton going from 10th to second – in Nevada in 2024 highlighted the strengths of the Mercedes package in cold, low-grip conditions.

That, plus Kimi Antonelli‘s strong run in Brazil, suggests Mercedes could be back fighting for victory this weekend, a scenario which could prove double-edged for Verstappen.

On the one hand, a strong Mercedes threatens to deepen Verstappen’s predicament.

With Norris leading the championship and McLaren entering Vegas as the form team, Verstappen can ill afford additional rivals siphoning points away from his recovery bid.

A revived Mercedes locking out the podium would limit Verstappen’s scoring potential exactly when he needs maximum yield.

Yet paradoxically, Mercedes could also represent Verstappen’s best hope of keeping the fight alive. For that, however, he will need to finish ahead of the Mercedes and hope the German squad is fast enough to beat the McLarens.

Ferrari could also enter the picture if last year’s results are anything to go by.

For Verstappen, then, Mercedes’ and even Ferrari’s performance could either prove to be a potential spoiler or a late-season lifeline.

Ferrari in the spotlight, but for the wrong reasons

Ferrari didn’t have anything to celebrate after a bruising Brazilian Grand Prix in which Hamilton had to retire and Charles Leclerc was taken out at the beginning of the race.

But things got worse post-race after its chairman John Elkann told its drivers to “talk less” in what many saw as a political fallout.

Las Vegas would already be a demanding challenge for a team that has gone over a year without a win, but Ferrari now approaches the weekend with the extra, self-inflicted variable of a difficult leadership climate.

For Hamilton and Leclerc, the chairman’s remarks will inevitably make them the spotlight. For Fred Vasseur, too, as his reaction will be of great interest, although he’s likely to downplay the comments.

The timing of Elkann’s remarks could hardly have been worse.

At a moment when Ferrari should be trying to refocus to try to secure the runner-up spot, the focus has shifted away from performance to politics.

Instead of questions about whether Ferrari can challenge McLaren or Red Bull under the neon lights of Las Vegas, the discussion is set to revolve around internal trust and morale.

Will Vegas find its true identity?

Two years on from its chaotic, headline-dominated debut, the Las Vegas Grand Prix returns with a quieter, more intriguing question hanging over it: has it finally figured out what kind of race it wants to be?

The inaugural weekend in 2023 was all noise: pure American spectacle and disruption, as well as a drain-cover incident that threatened to overshadow the weekend from the start.

The second running in 2024 was smoother but still uncertain, defined by extreme temperatures, unpredictable grip and a lingering sense that the event was still trying to reconcile its showbiz ambition with the realities of hosting a competitive late-season street F1 race.

That identity crisis extends beyond the track. Ticket demand has cooled substantially, forcing organisers to slash prices for 2025: single-day tickets now start as low as $50.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas tourism is slumping: visitor numbers in June 2025 were down 11.3 per cent year-over-year, and falling hotel occupancy and lower international arrivals are raising broader concerns about the city’s economic health.

Las Vegas is still committed to F1, but it remains to be seen how the city’s economic downturn could affect its long-term prospects.

Financials aside, the operational improvements – from faster circuit build to reduced disruption in the city – the 2025 GP should feel less like an experiment and more like a race trying to evolve into something sustainable that belongs on the F1 calendar in the long run.