The Athletic

The Races

The race is on, and a combination of his accomplished win on the streets of Las Vegas

and the disqualification of McLaren duo Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri has blown the driver's championship wide open again.

But how did McLaren get it so wrong and could Vestappen really pull off the seemingly impossible and retain the title?

I'm Ed Strawn joining me after a dramatic day on and off track are John Noble and Scott Mitchell Malm.

But John, simple question.

How did McLaren get this so badly wrong that Norris and Piastri were chucked out of second and fourth places?

Somewhere along the way, there was a miscalculation.

And it's alternative right height that these Formula One cars, ever since this ground effect era,

it's all been about running the car as low to the ground as you can or all the juicy down forces.

And then managing the suspension to avoid porpoising and all those elements.

And it's the constant battle teams have had.

And what you don't want to do is run so low that you wear your plank away, wear your skid

away and then become illegal.

And that's what happened to McLaren today.

They basically wore the plank too much down on both cars.

Real thing that we haven't got an answer yet for because McLaren we waited at McLaren tonight

hoping to speak to Andrea Estella for an explanation about what's happened. He cancelled that

session. Which is quite unusual because normally he's very good at sort of fronting up and

explaining it all. Yeah and because we just want an explanation because because, you know, how, what was the background?

What was the reason for it?

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