Lando Norris saw his slim chances of staying in the 2024 championship fight disappear for good at the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

To keep the title battle alive, he needed to outscore Max Verstappen by three points, but instead, the Dutchman finished fifth, with Norris right behind in sixth. The result confirmed Verstappen as a four-time world champion, with two races left in the season.

While Norris took the fastest lap and earned a bonus point, it wasn’t enough to make up for McLaren’s struggles during the weekend. He admitted that, even if McLaren had been perfect this season, Verstappen would have been hard to beat. Despite the disappointment, Norris highlighted how much McLaren had improved, now regularly competing for wins. 

“I'm very proud of the whole team for putting up the fight for so long, for starting to catch up and catching up as much as we did. We were the fourth-best team at the beginning of the year,” said Norris quoted by Motorsport.com.

“Red Bull have never been the fourth-best team or worst, let's say, ever. We had just too big of a deficit to catch up from the beginning of the season, and we could not, because they've been too strong.

“Next year, we'll go into the season with a car we think we can win a championship with from round one, and we've not been able to do that for the last six years, so I'm excited for that. 

“But I'm proud of what we've achieved. My first win in Formula 1, my first three [wins], no one else is there fighting him. It's been me and it's been McLaren.

"”Could we have done some things better? Absolutely. Do I think we could have won the championship even with a perfect season? I don't. So I'm happy to finish second.”

He also congratulated and praised Verstappen for his achievements as he is now one of only five drivers in F1 history to secure four consecutive titles.

“Congrats to Max – I’m disappointed I’m out of it, but Max deserved to win it,” Norris said.

“He drove a better season than I did, he deserved it more than anyone else, Max just doesn’t have a weakness.

“When he’s got the best car he dominates and when he’s not got the best car he’s still just there always, always there to make your life tough and difficult.

“He drove a very good year, can’t fault him. This weekend’s been dreadful from us, we couldn’t even put up a fight against Max, something I would have loved to have done today, but congrats to him for what he’s achieved.”

It was a tough race for the team overall, with both Norris and his teammate Oscar Piastri dealing with tyre issues. Still, their sixth and seventh-place finishes helped limit the damage in the Constructors’ Championship as the lead over Ferrari dropped from 36 to 24 points.