I don’t know if I give it a 0% chance yet. He needed to average 8 points per race, and Red Bull has been all over the map lately.
But yes, this shifts the onus over to Red Bull having to screw up, moreso than Lando being able to do it while they maintain performance. Lando could potentially earn up to 25 points if Max has a single DNF, which would erase this weekend entirely. And we don’t know that he won’t crawl his way up to 5th or something tomorrow either, nor does this necessarily mean Max will dominate tomorrow.
Still lots on the line though, if Max does place particularly well and Lando can’t get into the points, a 20+ points swing in his favour would lock down the WDC pretty well. An interesting race to watch for sure, the end of this season has a much more competitive WDC than last season’s.
Eh, this is a thing, large companies often have internal rules and maximums about how much they can pay any given job title. For example, on our team, everyone we hire is given the role “senior full stack developer”, not because they’re particularly senior, in some cases we’re literally hiring out of college, but because it allows us to pay them better with internal company politics.