Lando Norris blinks again at a crunch moment in the title race, writes JONATHAN McEVOY with Max Verstappen extending his lead as Brit finishes fourth and Charles Leclerc wins in Texas

What you can’t do is offer your title rival the freedom of Texas and expect to beat him for the most hotly contested prize in motorsports.

That’s what Lando Norris did at the American Grand Prix. Max Verstappen does not need a second invitation. He is adept at threading his raging Red Bull through the eye of a needle with sledgehammer force, let alone shooting into a hole that should never have been granted to him.

This was always going to be the final tough test of Norris’ mettle, with him starting from pole and Verstappen next to him on the grid.

He dropped to finish fourth, despite troubling Verstappen through the tense final exchanges. The Dutchman drove a slower car like a god to defend third place. Norris was penalized for gaining a lead by going four laps from the end of the track when passing Verstappen at Turn 12. Hearts were in mouths.

The race was won by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in a Ferrari one-two. The result is that Norris drops 57 points, five more than at the start of the weekend, with five rounds to go. The math can only give him a headache.

It all went back to how they would fare on that steep road into the first bend, past the huddled, sunlit hordes on the outside of the stunning scene?

Norris, who has a reputation for shyness off the line, responded quickly. His first outing was Bolt-esque. He controlled the track on the first climb, but hit the brakes too early, allowing Verstappen to take the lead via the only conceivable route: to Norris’s left, on the inside.

Now Verstappen is not known as a shrinking violet. Pleasant off the track, then he would rob his grandmother. To say the least, Norris could hardly have been unaware of this side of his friend’s DNA. So there was no excuse for his caution.

Still, Norris complained on the radio. “He clearly pushed me away,” he protested too much. “He wasn’t going to make the corner. He also had to leave the job. I had to avoid bumping into him.”

Zak Brown, Norris’s McLaren boss, claimed Verstappen had ‘bombed’ his man. He would.

But I’m afraid that even chauvinism cannot disguise the fact that Verstappen simply took advantage of a legitimate opportunity. The stewards didn’t even notice the incident.

In the second corner of the first lap of 56, Norris was fourth again.

Echoes of past races came to mind. Only once when the Briton started on pole, in seven Grands Prix and one sprint, did he lead the opening lap. Conversion rate isn’t title-winning stuff.

It has to be said that Norris has driven very well this season, with speed and skill, but in the crucial moments he has blinked. In Saturday’s shortened race, he stopped at the death and fell from second to third. Then he was still smiling. If Lews Hamilton had made the mistake, he would have been as cheerful as a mortuary. These costly little mistakes kill the spirits of the best.

The three weeks of inactivity since the previous race in Singapore were the least necessary for Norris. His confidence was high – he maintained his lead from pole – and crushed all opposition.

All around him are memories of the mounting pressure at the height of a thrilling match. Brickbats are thrown. No one uses the word “cheating,” but the crime is stated in code by the protagonists.

Red Bull didn’t like McLaren’s rear wing. Too much bending, they claimed. It needed adjustments, a change that was made before Singapore. Would it limit their progress here at a track where the old configuration would likely have provided a performance advantage?

Maybe a little, but Norris’ brilliant late strike didn’t suggest much.

McLaren then implied that Red Bull regularly adjusted the ride height between qualifying and the race, in strict violation of the conditions. “Paranoia and moaning,” Christian Horner replied.

His McLaren counterpart Brown responded by calling on Red Bull to prove they are as white as they claim by signing affidavits denying their parked cars are being tampered with.

Horner and Brown went into more pleasant days of shooting together. Now you wouldn’t let them near weapons within shooting range of each other.

It was also a weekend for the last Briton to claim the world title, Hamilton.

He has achieved a record five times here in Austin, and six times total in America, the place he now considers home. But he started the sprint seventh, finished sixth, qualified 19th and was then the first man back in the paddock, his car in the gravel. “Sorry, guys,” he said.