At the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix Max Verstappen clinched his fourth straight world title with a low-key drive to fifth place in his Red Bull. Given that his only title rival Lando Norris was always behind him, his McLaren with no great pace, it was enough.
George Russell meanwhile completely dominated the race from pole and his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton finished just a few seconds behind him despite having started only 10th after two crucial mistakes in qualifying the day before.
There was a brief moment on the fourth lap where Charles Leclerc almost got his Ferrari ahead of Russell and Scuderia team boss Frederic Vasseur said if that move had succeeded the outcome of the race would have been different. But even he probably doesn’t really believe that, such was the pace advantage of Mercedes. On the same two-stop strategy Russell finished over 14sec ahead of the lead Ferrari of Carlos Sainz in third. That was with Russell in tyre management mode for most of the race. The gap might easily have been double that, if we look at Hamilton’s recovery drive to see how fast a Merc could have been driven. Had Leclerc made the move stick to take an early lead, it would surely only have led to a different route to the same outcome. The Merc was hugely faster and if Russell hadn’t been able to thwart the Ferrari’s strong end-of-straight speed to pass on track, he’d inevitably have used the Merc’s pace and its ability to switch its tyres on way faster to have passed around the pitstops.
