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Despite the hype around the Sin City Grand Prix, Lando Norris is maintaining a calm demeanor regarding his prospects of securing his first drivers' championship.

The British driver presently has a 24-point advantage over fellow McLaren driver Oscar Piastri and is ahead of Max Verstappen by 49 points, with just a maximum of eighty-three points up for grabs across the final three races. However, after staging a extraordinary comeback from 34 points behind his teammate after the Zandvoort race in the summer, Norris is concentrating on performing with the clinical precision that lifted him to the top of the championship.

"Things can easily turn the opposite way once more as much as I hope it doesn't," he stated. "That's racing, as we all know. Sometimes you get lucky. You can end up unlucky. Whatever it may be. It's no point becoming overjoyed or thinking about it. I still view it as a goal that's quite distant."

The 26-year-old has discovered his best form at a crucial juncture—having struggled with the car in the opening half of the season—at the same time that Piastri has lost the controlled, nearly perfect ease that previously made him seem to be a champion in waiting. Importantly, Norris maintained a remarkable level of equanimity throughout, asserting even in the face of challenges—such as his withdrawal from the Zandvoort race—that he would stick to his gameplan and approach every outing with the same relentless attention to detail. This approach has paid off.

All the while, McLaren 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 torturous process, most notably at the Italian Grand Prix when the squad instructed the Australian to cede second place to his teammate after he had fallen behind because of a slow pit stop. Certain spectators were unhappy with what was considered the team needlessly interfering with their drivers.

Norris has claimed victory in the previous pair of grands prix, in Mexico City and Brazil, and was jeered on the winner's rostrum at each, leaving him unfazed. "Once you are on top, many individuals want to bring you down. They don't want to see you succeeding. I consider it a good thing," he said.

"It just amuses me. When I was on the winner's stage in Interlagos, I truly enjoyed it. The experience was very enjoyable. At last you feel like you are achieving something right.

"I don't mind, as long as I win. As long as I feel like I am competing the correct manner, which I feel like that's the case, so long as I feel like I'm putting effort into remaining true to myself and those kinds of things, then I am not concerned with the rest of it."

Vegas, meanwhile, needs to be mastered, and it is not a track ideal for the McLaren. It shares similarities with Canada and Azerbaijan: low downforce, chilly conditions, and low grip. They are the only two tracks in the current championship where McLaren have been unable to claim at least one podium place, and Norris was circumspect once more about their prospects in Nevada. Yet, his objective in the short term is simple: end the race in front of his teammate and the points he needs will come.

Friday Running Shows Varied Results for Championship Rivals

The Ferrari driver led the leaderboard in first practice on what was remained a sandy and extremely slippery surface. Alex Albon was runner-up, with the Red Bull star in fourth, Norris in P6, and Piastri eighth. During the more indicative evening session of second practice, Norris was quickest ahead of the Mercedes of the Italian rookie, with Piastri down in fourteenth; though, the session lost almost all of the final 20 minutes of running to check a suspected loose drain cover at the penultimate corner.

The issue is treated with caution on a temporary track where, at the first Las Vegas GP held in 2023, a dislodged drain cover struck the Ferrari, heavily harming it and leading to the practice to be aborted.

Mercedes Announce Ownership Transaction

Mercedes have confirmed that their boss Toto Wolff has divested a 15% stake in his investment firm, equating to a five percent ownership in the team, to American billionaire George Kurtz. The investor is the chief executive and creator of the cybersecurity company the tech giant. Wolff will stay on as boss and may receive up to £230m from the sale, with Mercedes having been appraised at £4.57bn, a record for an Formula 1 constructor.