Formula 1's Las Vegas Grand Prix produced plenty of drama once again, both before and after the chequered flag.
Here's everything we learned from the Las Vegas GP weekend...
Rivals pushed McLaren to risky place
Whatever McLaren got wrong versus its rivals to have the only cars disqualified in Las Vegas for excessive plank wear, it showed that the benchmark team is operating at its limit.
There is clearly no margin for McLaren, even though the constructors’ championship has long been sewn up. It is still trying to win every race, because there is a drivers’ title to secure amid increasing pressure from Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
McLaren seemed to have a bit more margin earlier in the season, especially relative to the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari. Red Bull would swing back and forth. Now though, McLaren has less room to just rock up and win than ever before - and any points swings for its drivers are critical at this stage of the season.
So it has very little scope to compromise on how it runs its car to maximise performance. The suggestions it flirted with excessive wear in Brazil (but was on the right side of legality) before actually getting it wrong in Vegas shows how much McLaren has been pushed into a risky place. - Scott Mitchell-Malm
This is Hamilton's worst season
If Ferrari president John Elkann had Lewis Hamilton’s most negative assessments in mind when he recently told his Ferrari drivers to “talk less”, then the seven-time world champion’s post-race comments in Las Vegas will get his attention again immediately.
Hamilton seems stuck in a spiral. The sparks of something better keep getting washed over by a fresh setback and Hamilton himself is struggling to see any positives.
In a very disappointing first year at Ferrari overall, he is speaking as though each of these final weekends is taking him to a new low.
He dismissed his low-profile run to 10th on the road as offering “zero” satisfaction and saying it “doesn’t mean anything”, because “at this rate, with my performance, we don't” have a chance of finishing second in the championship, and he has “tried everything, it’s not working”.
This is Hamilton’s worst season in F1 - by his own admission and experience, by points (since the system changed), by the absence of a single grand prix podium finish.
The brutal way he talks about it might be his own mindset and something he needs to do in order to get back on the horse each time - but it’s sending a message that there is nothing to salvage this late on. - SMM
Antonelli is showing us a new side to his game
He’s been a bit of a late bloomer compared to some of F1’s other rookies this season, but that’s two races in a row now where Kimi Antonelli has really impressed - and in Vegas it was in a different way too.
Brazil was one of those rare weekends, a bit like the Miami sprint much earlier in the season, where Antonelli just hit the groove quickly and had Mercedes team-mate George Russell scrambling to catch up. The difference in Brazil compared to Miami was that Antonelli finished the grand prix still ahead rather than fading away as he did back in May.
Vegas was in many ways more convincing, though, because Antonelli somehow turned a really low grid position (and a microscopic jump start) into a top-five finish on the road, which became a podium finish when the McLarens were booted out.
OK, it wasn’t quite a Verstappen Brazil podium from the pitlane, but it was along a similar theme: executing a strategy that no one else really made work. Antonelli effectively did a ‘no-stop’ race, and it wasn’t the kind of plodding monster stint on the tyres where he was clinging on desperately against faster cars at the end. Over the final 12 laps he was actually quicker than Russell, who let’s not forget ran a close second to Verstappen early on having won this race easily a year ago.
With some advice from the team, Antonelli found a way to push through the front tyre graining in a way that Russell didn’t, using the sort of rear-sliding-biased driving style that often makes drivers like Verstappen and Charles Leclerc so formidable in front-limited races like this one.
It’s been a while coming, but it increasingly feels like the real Kimi Antonelli that Mercedes hyped up so much has finally arrived. - Ben Anderson
The most wide-open fight has shrunk
What has been the most wide-open fight in the championship, and arguably the most valuable given how much prize money is at play, is finally shrinking.
Williams has been fairly secure in fifth place at while but still vulnerable to a freak result benefiting someone else - so Carlos Sainz’s 10-pointer in Vegas was a helpful nudge to safety as it gives the team a 31-point margin with two weekends remaining.
Behind, the battle for sixth swung more emphatically towards Racing Bulls in Vegas too. In fact, even though the double disqualification of the McLarens elevated both Haas drivers into the points - when the team was originally set to score nothing - actually helped Racing Bulls more.
That’s because Isack Hadjar got promoted from eighth to sixth, a four-point gain versus the three points that Haas inherited in ninth and 10th.
It was still a critical elevation for Haas as it moved the team above Aston Martin into seventh - while Nico Hulkenberg’s promotion to seventh means Sauber tripled its haul and is just four points behind Aston now.
Who finishes seventh, eighth and ninth is now the closest battle after the sands shifted subtly but significantly. - SMM
Aston Martin is making more major changes
After an Adrian Newey-led reshuffle earlier this month, Aston Martin isn't finished making changes ahead of a pivotal 2026 season.
Team boss and CEO Andy Cowell is being moved aside to focus on the engine operation with new-for-2026 partner Honda, and Aston Martin is weighing up a big-name replacement.
Ex-Aston Martin Group CEO and former McLaren F1 team boss Martin Whitmarsh and current Audi COO Mattia Binotto were both considered but have ruled themselves out of the race.
That currently leaves two leading candidates in ousted Red Bull team boss Christian Horner and ex-McLaren F1 team boss Andreas Seidl, who most recently served as Audi's F1 CEO before departing last year.
Horner can return to work with an F1 team in the first half of 2026 as part of his near-$100million settlement agreed with Red Bull, and he appears to be near the top of Aston Martin's shortlist.
Whether that would work for Horner - given he wants increased control and potential part-ownership versus what he was removed from at Red Bull - remains to be seen, but it could be one of the most fascinating winter break plotlines given the team's huge ambitions for F1's new ruleset. - Josh Suttill
Ferrari is absolutely useless in the wet
We all know the 2025 Ferrari isn’t going to become a museum piece when it finishes its working life. It’s a poor car that doesn’t work properly and the drivers surely can’t wait to be rid of it. We also know that Charles Leclerc is a superb driver, who more often than not has been the bright spot for Ferrari in this most trying of years.
But when it comes to wet weather running, as we saw in Vegas qualifying, Leclerc fell well short of his usual heroics. He placed ninth in each of the three segments, always 1-2 seconds off the pace, visibly struggling, particularly under braking.
There’s not been a huge amount of important wet running in F1 in 2025, but of what there has been for Ferrari Vegas was undoubtedly rubbish, the British Grand Prix certainly was for Leclerc (though it was much better for Lewis Hamilton) and the Australian GP wasn’t great either.
Amid the many problems Ferrari needs to solve, being competitive in wet/low-grip conditions is a particular bugbear for Leclerc, who feels Ferrari is “struggling massively in the wet. We don't quite find the solution. We've been trying like crazy, but it just doesn't work.
“I feel like with the previous generations of cars, it was very, very similar,” he revealed. “We've just been struggling and being poor on the wet since I joined the team, really.
“And it's very, very frustrating, because it's been probably my biggest strength in the junior categories. We are just struggling like crazy whenever it's wet. The tyres don't switch on, and we just have very, very poor grip.
“We've had Lewis in the team, we've had Carlos in the team as well, which have obviously seen what it's like to be driving other cars in those conditions, and it's clear we've got to do steps forward in those conditions. At least for me, it’s unbelievably difficult to drive.” - BA
Drivers hate two things about Las Vegas
While F1 drivers acknowledge the commercial value and unique spectacle of the Las Vegas GP, there seems to be two common complaints.
The first is the track surface, described by Fernando Alonso as "not a Formula 1 standard".
He says it's "too slippery, extremely bumpy at the limit of being safe [enough] to race" and said the drivers need to discuss with the FIA whether it's acceptable going forward.
Then there's the unique schedule of the Vegas weekend given its place in the calendar - the start of a triple-header with the other two races taking place on the other side of the world.
“We go to Qatar now straight, and it's 17 hours [in a plane], with 13 hours’ time difference," Alonso said.
"I don't think any other sport in the world would accept that."
That exact same triple-header is planned for 2026 too with Las Vegas followed by Qatar and Abu Dhabi to round out the season. - JS
...and the FIA can expect its racing guidelines to be torn apart
Speaking of driver discontent, the racing guidelines that help F1 stewards make calls on incidents are set to be under the spotlight in Qatar.
As has become customary in recent years, the drivers will meet with the FIA to discuss what is and isn't working with F1's racing.
And it's likely those racing guidelines are going to come under heavy scrutiny later this week.
They were already widely criticised on the eve of the Las Vegas GP with drivers like GPDA director Sainz branding Oscar Piastri's Brazil penalty as "unacceptable".
And matters won't have been helped by some of the decision-making on Sunday, as Liam Lawson went unpunished for clattering Piastri on the first lap - "ambitious but apparently okay" in the words of Piastri.
He says that will be one of many incidents the drivers will be talking about with the FIA in Qatar, as there's the potential for changes for a system few people believe is working.
It could be a long meeting...
