Max Verstappen is still in the running, but how can he win?
Before the Las Vegas Grand Prix
The likelihood of Verstappen having a chance at the championship was looking less and less likely before Vegas, but now he is close in their rearview mirrors.
Looking back to the Dutch Grand Prix, round 15, Verstappen was 104 points behind Piastri. Verstappen’s performance after summer break is nothing if not impressive, going from a 104 point difference to a 0 point difference.
Before the LVGP, Verstappen was 25 points behind Oscar Piastri and 49 points behind Lando Norris. While Verstappen was close, that is a difficult amount of points to make up.
After LVGP
Before the double disqualification for the McLarens, Verstappen seemed pretty out of the loop even with his win. After the disqualification, which occurred due to excessive skid block wear, Verstappen is now closer than ever to the McLarens. He is currently tied with Piastri and just 24 points behind Norris.
There are now three races left with the Qatar sprint and feature race and the Abu Dhabi feature race. With these three races there are 58 championship points up for grabs. 25 from winning each of the feature races and an extra eight from the Qatar sprint.
“If” scenarios
If Verstappen won the Qatar sprint with Norris in P2 and Piastri in P3 that would bring Verstappen 2 points ahead of Piastri. They would sit at 397 points (Norris), 374 points (Verstappen), and 372 points (Piastri).
If Verstappen won the Qatar feature race with Piastri in P2 and Norris in P3 that would bring Verstappen to 9 points ahead of Piastri. They would then sit at 412 points (Norris), 399 points (Verstappen), and 390 points (Piastri).
If Verstappen won the Abu Dhabi feature race with Piastri in P2 and Norris in P4 that would bring Verstappen to be tied with Norris at 424 points. In this case the champion would be decided by whomever has more wins in the season, which would be Verstappen with eight wins as Norris would only have 7 wins in the season.
There is also the event that Norris does not score points in any of the 3 races which would make Verstappen’s chances even better. For example, if Norris DNFed at the Qatar feature race and Verstappen won then Verstappen would be ahead of Norris by two points going into Abu Dhabi.
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