It is a strange phenomenon that has followed Lando Norris to the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip. Boos for the unlikeliest of characters.
In the last two races, the world championship leader who turned 26 last week, received jeers as he won them both. ‘Why?’, we all wondered.
What had caused crowds in Mexico City and Sao Paulo to be so moved to visit their ire on Norris?
It seems, so far as it is explicable, their resentment centred on a belief he is favoured by McLaren over his Australian team-mate Oscar Piastri, his closest title rival, 24 points off the summit.
The boo-boys believed he was preferred in Monza earlier in September when allowed to pass Piastri after suffering a botched pit stop. They have a point in this instance, if not over the season (Norris faced ‘repercussions’ for inadvertently crashing into Piastri in Singapore). The decision to move the pair around struck me as wrong then and does now. If a pit stop is slow, it is part of racing. Live with it; don’t override it in some sinuous attempt to iron out the imperfection.
Since then Norris has been impressive and Piastri has strangely wilted. If anyone can spring a surprise over the final three races – here in Las Vegas at a sinless 4am of the British Sunday morning, in Qatar next week and in Abu Dhabi the one after – it feels more likely to be Max Verstappen than Piastri.
Lando Norris was focused as he arrives in the pit lane at the Las Vegas Grand Prix on Friday
Fans feel Oscar Piastri has been on the wrong end of team orders in the drivers’ title race
The Dutchman, though, is 49 points back and needs something serious to go wrong with Norris to push himself into contention. He also needs his Red Bull to be fast, which it looked to be in practice, though it was Norris who led the way. Yet these indications were hardly foolproof because the running was truncated by a manhole cover wobbling.
This track malfunction was an echo of the problem in the first Las Vegas GP in 2023, when the action was concluded at an eye-reddening 4am in front of deserted stands. The programme has moved forward since then, and thank heavens for those of us here.
But back on the subject of boos, Norris is relaxed about the attention. He seems chilled about everything right now. It is as if he feels in control of his championship fate, which he indeed is despite a truly gruelling schedule.
Gruelling? I write this at 8am local time in Vegas. It is 5pm in Monaco, from where Norris travelled. It is 7pm in Qatar, where he goes next, and 8pm in Abu Dhabi. That’s being pulled this way and that – a serious drain when you are called on to drive inch-perfectly at 210mph.
Speaking in cold Nevada, where some rain has fallen in the last few days with more a possibility, Norris said: ‘I see the boos as a good thing. It is like you have finally done something right.
‘Max got a lot of boos in previous years. He doesn’t get any now. He gets the most cheers. Lewis (Hamilton) got a lot of boos before. I guess when you’re on top, people want to bring you down. They don’t want to see you winning.
‘If I do a s*** job and get boos, I deserve it. But if I win and I get them, I couldn’t care less. I have so many fans that back me always.
‘I didn’t come on the radio and say, “Hey, can we do this?” I had nothing to do with it. So that’s why it doesn’t bother me.’
Max Verstappen used to get booed at various races but now receives a far warmer reception
Norris can afford to finish second in all remaining grands prix and win the title. Not that finishing second is a given. It is a safety-blanket statistic that could be ripped apart by one bad race in Sin City, where the security precautions are being stepped up as race day approaches.
Rooms overlooking the track are being regularly searched to ward against the possibility of a repeat of the deadliest mass shooting in US history eight years ago at a country music festival – a horror perpetrated out of a window in the Mandalay Bay hotel.
The murderer, who shot himself in his room, was called Stephen Paddock, and in respect to the community here the hub of F1 activity is called the ‘Grand Prix Plaza’, not the paddock.
That is a black thought, one that puts a few boos into painful perspective.
Returning to the frivolity of sport, Norris added: ‘There is no point getting excited about winning the title, or dreaming of it, because it still feels quite far away.’
It sounded fair psychology, but Norris knows it isn’t true. We are about to find out whether he is resistant to such proximity to the flame.
