So Norris ran away from the pack in the first stint, everyone on inters for a long time and the McLaren’s advantage just increasing the longer that phase went on. Piastri, after having his pockets picked by Verstappen on the opening lap, took advantage of a Verstappen moment on lap 17 as the Red Bull’s tyres began to fade. Piastri quickly brought the 3sec gap to Norris down, as the latter concentrated on looking after the tyres. He got to within DRS range before being called off by McLaren, by which time they had over 16sec on Verstappen. In calling off Piastri around the tricky late inters phase, McLaren was trying to secure the 1-2. But Piastri was keen to race for the win. There are going to be many such situations. By the time McLaren released Piastri to race, he’d had a moment across the Turn 6 gravel and was no longer on Norris’s back.

Later, as they were both on slicks and with a safety car having bunched the pack up, the McLarens were the first to find the sudden rain at Turn 12. Norris rescued a major moment, Piastri went off onto the grass and got stuck there for about a minute. Norris pitted immediately for inters, the closely-following Verstappen stayed out for a couple of laps but ultimately exited around 5sec behind after also changing to inters. Another safety car late in the race gave him a second bite at Norris and he almost got him, as the McLaren flirted with the Turn 6 gravel trap. Almost but not quite.

George Russell was always a bit of a distance behind Verstappen and was a solid third. “It was pretty clear from the beginning that these guys were too quick for us,” he said, “and that we were quicker than Ferrari. So, I was kind of in no man’s land. I made a decision quite early on that the best way to approach this race was just to bring it home. If I risked it more, there was no extra reward on the table because they were just so far ahead.” He finished ahead of team mate Kimi Antonelli who drove a great race from his compromised 16th place grid spot, as fast or faster than Russell in the wet.

Ferrari gambled one lap longer than Verstappen on staying out on slicks, hoping the rain would stop, dropping them several places, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton ultimately taking eighth and 10th. Without that gamble, they’d have been fourth and fifth.

The Scuderia didn’t get the most from a car which looked the closest rival to McLaren on Friday. It suffered as the track temperature increased on Saturday. Hamilton was still finding his way with it, was initially around 0.4sec off Leclerc, trimming this to around 0.2sec by qualifying.

The Racing Bulls and Williams were pretty quick and closely-matched. Yuki Tsunoda was running with the Ferraris in the race but made the same gamble as them at the final pitstops and dropped out the points. Isack Hadjar and Carlos Sainz were both caught out by sudden wheelspin on the formation lap and first lap respectively. Leaving Alex Albon to score a great fifth for Williams. Pitting at the right time near the end helped Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin and Nico Hülkenberg’s Sauber to respective sixth and seventh places.

“I think we’ll have tracks where we will be even better,” said Norris, “and I think we’ll have a couple where we’ll struggle. We were good last year, especially in the second half of the season, but Vegas was woeful. In fact, we were shocking. There are other tracks along those lines where we did struggle quite a bit. We’ve definitely made our car much more balanced across all types of circuits – high speed, low speed, high downforce, low downforce. We’re competitive at most. But these low grip tracks like Vegas, we really struggled. It highlighted our issues with the front of the car – the graining, the lack of rotation. We know that, though. We know where we’re going to struggle. Even in Bahrain a couple of weeks ago, we came out confident, but everyone was hyping us up a lot. Mainly just because our high-fuel pace was very strong. But on low fuel, we were struggling. We were not as quick as some of the others. Even if we took all our fuel out and maxed the engine mode, I don’t think we would have been quicker. We know we have work to do. If we raced in Bahrain again, I wouldn’t be confident we could win the race. But I’m confident that when we go to China next weekend, we can be very strong, because we were strong there last year with not a very good car.”

Lando Norris leads the world championship, with 23 races to go.