Lando Norris faced disqualification late into the night at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after his car was deemed illegal, dramatically altering the landscape of the world championship.

The British racer initially believed he had secured a commendable second place behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the high-energy Las Vegas event. However, Norris was unexpectedly called to the stewards’ office two hours after the race concluded.

In the early hours, at 1:45 a.m., the verdict was delivered in the dimly lit paddock. Norris was disqualified due to a breach involving a ‘rearmost skid’ that failed to meet the required thickness. His McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri, faced the same fate for the identical infraction, stripping him of his fourth-place finish.

The stewards announced, “Car 4 (Norris’s) and car 81 (Piastri’s) are disqualified from the race results. All other drivers will move up in the standings.”

On the technical side, they clarified, “Norris’s rear skids were measured and found to be below the 9mm minimum thickness mandated by Article 3.5.9. Specifically, the measurements were RHS Front 8.88mm and RHS Rear 8.93mm.”

Lando Norris has been disqualified from the Las Vegas Grand Prix

Max Verstappen is all smiles with his team as he celebrates his victory in Las Vegas

The adjudication moved George Russell up from third to second place, with his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli elevated from fifth to third.

But more importantly the verdict opened the door on the barely believable. Verstappen is now seriously in the hunt for a fifth consecutive world championship. The dynamic of the whole season has been turned on its head, and was McLaren’s expulsion not a result of taking their car to beyond the limit because they felt a need to push the boundaries?

Norris will be nervous now, surely, the biggest of all Dutch beasts in his mirrors and, to mix metaphors, knocking at the door of his dreams.

It had not seemed this way a few hours earlier. Norris had extended his lead to 30 points over Piastri and to 42 over Verstappen. Verstappen had started second and finished first. Norris had started first and finished second. All was well in the Norris garden.

And when the top three – as they then were – took their ride in a pink Lego Cadillac to the podium ceremonials at the Bellagio hotel, and the sky was lit up by fireworks, there was merely a distant possibility of Verstappen staging a late heist but with barely time left for that.

The maths are still stacked heavily in Norris’s favour and against Verstappen. Yet did we see some jitteriness in the championship leader? His one blip, his illegal car apart, came at the start. He was well away from pole and covered Verstappen aggressively in moving to his left, but he was too exuberant at the first corner, braking late at the hairpin just 218 yards down from where he started. ‘I f***** it up,’ admitted Norris afterwards. ‘I was too punchy, and it cost me.’

His error saw him lose first place and he fell back into third position, Russell passing his McLaren too.

Verstappen, in truth, was away from this point onwards and always looked assured of adding this victory to his Las Vegas triumph of two years ago.

Norris passed Russell on lap 34 of 50 along the Boulevard, with its famously grandiose hotels, and went on a charge for Verstappen, but he had no extra pace on the Red Bull man. Norris was nursing a problem – we now know what it may have related following the stewards’ judgment – as the race closed, and he was 20 seconds back in the (almost) final analysis.

‘Great execution,’ said Verstappen over the radio to his team after Catherine Zeta-Jones waved the chequered flag. ‘Very happy, guys, well done.’ He added: ‘After Abu Dhabi we will see where we end up. We have had some ups and downs and some beautiful moments, which is good for the years ahead.’

It was, in truth, a dull race, one of the worst of the campaign, for all the hoopla and the bright lights – a shame because the previous two editions here had sparkle about them.

Actor Terry Crews drives Verstappen, Norris and George Russell to the podium in a Lego car

Antonelli, having something of a revival in a searching first season for Mercedes, his belated podium being his third of the year, would have finished fourth prior to the stewards’ inquiry, a place ahead of Piastri, but he was handed a five-second penalty for jumping the start. His anticipatory move was not discernible, or barely so, to the naked eye. He came in fifth once his subtraction was imposed, only for officialdom to promote him, of course.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finished sixth, upgraded to fourth, with Lewis Hamilton 10th in the other red car, accelerated to eighth, though that was some redemption after he qualified in last place. He navigated the start smoothly as Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto drove into Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll, but scoring four points was not anything to write home about. ‘Terrible,’ he lamented with his now-weekly candour, adding: ‘The worst season ever, and it is getting worse.’

Mickey Mouse did a turn at the podium extravaganza, David Coulthard admonished Norris for swearing. ‘You can’t say that,’ he told him of his F-bomb. The championship leader was chipper, regardless. Or so it appeared.

But did he have an inkling that he and his team had driven into an ambush of their own making? One with the potential to make his bum squeak?