Everyone already knows that “Mad Max” Verstappen is ruthless behind the wheel.
But a leaked, previously untelevised team-radio exchange from the Las Vegas Grand Prix has taken his reputation as F1’s ultimate mentality monster to another level.
And with McLaren’s double disqualification turning the championship fight on its head, the timing couldn’t be more explosive.
Lando Norris, who once seemed comfortably in control, now clings onto his championship lead by just 24 points — a margin slim enough for Verstappen (and even Oscar Piastri) to smash through if the dominoes keep falling.
But Vegas showed that Verstappen isn’t just hunting Norris on track — he’s living rent-free in his head before the lights even go out.
The Formation-Lap Mind Games
Las
Vegas’s icy track temperatures meant drivers were instructed to perform up to five burnouts at the end of the formation lap to heat up their rear tyres.
Verstappen executed all five aggressively. Norris did three, and none with the same bite, because he was too busy worrying about the gap between them.
A gap Verstappen was deliberately playing with.
Under formation-lap rules, drivers must keep the pack “as tight as possible.” There’s no hard 10-car-length limit, but that didn’t stop Norris from fixating on Max’s positioning — and spiralling into frustration over team radio.
Here’s the full leaked exchange, as per reports from PlanetF1:
Norris: “Yeah, he’s taking the pss with how big of a gap he’s leaving. It’s way over the allowed allowance.”
McLaren: “Yeah, we see that Lando.”
Norris: “Yeah. Come on! He’s just taking the pss here. You can’t do this. It’s 10 car lengths, no?”
McLaren: “Yeah, we see that Lando.”
Meanwhile, Verstappen finished his five burnouts, launched better off the line, and forced Norris into a desperate swerve toward the pit wall before the Brit ran wide at Turn 1.
Norris had better stop listening to ‘all the cr*p that others talk’, if he wishes to stave off a seemingly rabid Verstappen, who continues to hound the Brit in pursuit of his fifth championship.
