US Grand Prix: Max Verstappen ‘gets into the McLaren fun’ with Zac Brown preparing for ‘brutal’ title climax

The crash and Verstappen’s subsequent sprint win cut the four-time champion’s lead over Piastri to 55 points, while he now trails Norris by 33 points.

The Australian had a 104-point lead over Verstappen after the Dutch race on August 31, so nearly half of that lead has been eroded over three grands prix and a sprint race. There are still six races to go and two more to come.

Under normal circumstances, it seems inevitable that Piastri will lose more ground to Verstappen on Sunday in Texas. Norris has a chance to go further, but as he pointed out, the McLaren did not look like a car that would outperform Verstappen at any point this weekend.

“It’s going to be tough,” Norris said. “We were hoping to learn a lot in the sprint in terms of how to set up the car from qualifying to the race and hopefully make adjustments but it didn’t go as planned so we’re definitely on the back foot. But we’re not going to make that an excuse for tomorrow.”

“Obviously we won’t be as fast as Red Bull so we have to be happy with second place. We won’t be distracted by the chaos and nonsense that everyone is creating.

“Saturdays haven’t been good at all this year, so hopefully we can step it up tomorrow and be a little bit quicker.

“I have to be optimistic. Every lap we did today was 0.3-0.5 seconds behind Max, so it will be very difficult to change that. I’m sure if Max had done the last lap he would have made a good move faster anyway.

“They’ve been fast in a lot of races recently. They’ve done very well and they seem to be catching up with us a little bit. Not too much, just enough that they’re in front more consistently. Then you get more chances and of course Max is good at making the most of them.”

Meanwhile, Stella admitted McLaren was more aware of how strong Verstappen would be during the remainder of the season.

“I would have expected a smaller gap here, if anything, so we have to look at the facts, we have to look at the numbers,” he said. He continued: “Only objectively, we have not necessarily increased the performance available in the car today.

“But we need to be ready as a team and as drivers for Max and Red Bull to be competitive and possibly the fastest car in all the remaining races.”