A mouth-watering clash between two Championship heavyweights will kick us off on Friday night as in-form Sheffield United travel to Leeds United for a big Yorkshire derby.

Leeds went into the international break on a somewhat downbeat note after goalkeeper Illan Meslier’s extraordinary blunder gifted Sunderland a 97th-minute equaliser at the Stadium of Light.

It means the Whites have now drawn their past two games and will be desperate to return to winning ways in what will likely be a thunderous Elland Road atmosphere under the lights.

The unbeaten Blades, meanwhile, have won five of their past six and are level on points with leaders Sunderland – they would be top if not for a two-point deduction for defaulted transfer payments.

Chris Wilder’s side boast the best defence in the league, having conceded only three times this season, and head into the game on the back of six successive clean sheets – they last let a goal in on 24 August in a 1-1 draw at Norwich.

Both sides will have the chance to go top before Sunderland visit Hull City on Sunday, although even with victory, Daniel Farke’s team would be heavily relying on results elsewhere to fall their way to stay at the summit.

IT is do or die for Lando Norris as Formula One heads into the final six races.

The biggest comeback in the sport’s history is on, and it will take something exceptional to pull it off – but it is not beyond the realms of possibility.

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The Sprint weekend at Austin’s sweeping Circuit of the Americas marks the first of the final races to the end of the season in Abu Dhabi on December 8.

SunSport has chewed the fat on the Verstappen-Norris title fight and what it will take for the McLaren driver to emerge victorious.

How things stand

Red Bull driver Verstappen holds a 52-point lead over Norris in the Drivers’ Championship.

The tables have massively turned, given Verstappen held a season-high lead of 84 points up until the British Grand Prix in July 7.

In-form Norris has outscored him in all but one of the six races that have taken place since.

The margin of 52 points is the exact equivalent of winning two races with the fastest lap bonus point (25+1) on a non-Sprint race weekend.

🏁 Complete F1 2024 race calendar – details on every Grand Prix and start time this year 🏁

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How many points are left to play for?

There is a maximum of 180 points up for grabs across the final six race weekends of the season.

That is 156 points in the remaining six grands prix, 25 for a win plus one for the fastest lap.

In addition, there are three sprint races remaining where one driver could bag a maximum of 24 points.

The winners of the sprint races in USA, Brazil and Qatar will be awarded eight points for victory.

How does Norris need to outscore Verstappen?

Norris must outscore Verstappen by an average of almost nine points (8.67 points to be precise) at each grand prix weekend until the end of the season.

That is the points difference between first and third places (10 points) in a grand prix.

Norris cannot be crowned champion if he wins every race and Verstappen comes in second.

That could have still been on the cards had Norris clung onto the bonus point at the most recent grand prix in Singapore for fastest lap.

But Daniel Ricciardo controversially snatched it away on fresh tyres with one lap to go.

When could the title be won?

The absolute earliest the title could theoretically be won by Verstappen is the Sao Paulo GP weekend on November 1-3.

But the Red Bull driver would have to outscore Norris by at least a whopping 34 points over the next triple-header.

Who’s got the quicker car?

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There’s no doubt about it being McLaren, who have won four of the last six races, two for Norris and two for Oscar Piastri.

This season’s McLaren MCL38 has been the most consistent performer on different types of circuit.

Whereas Max Verstappen recently in Singapore said that Red Bull’s RB20 was “f***ed”.

The team are pinning their hopes on a significant upgrade planned on the RB20 for Austin this weekend.

F1 reporter Isabelle Barker’s prediction

I EXPECT Max Verstappen to go all guns blazing over the next six-rounds. I also think his experience and aggression could give him the edge.

It seems too little too late for Norris showing consistency, despite that dominant win in Singapore last time out.

You can’t help think what could have been had he sorted out his first-lap issues sooner.

Norris needs to prove he has the mental fortitude, because we all know he’s got the speed, the team and the fastest car.

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Verstappen has endured an eight-race winless streak, but he has still managed to score points, with three second-places during that time.

So I think the Dutchman will lift his fourth world-title this season, by the skin of his teeth.

As the Formula 1 grid has got ever closer, detail differences have become more critical in the fight for wins.

One area that is getting increasing attention is tyre behaviour – and especially how to manage them over race stints better than your rivals.

Teams and drivers have quickly come to understand that there are some special tricks needed to master what Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz has labelled ‘Pirelli Magic.’

What he is referring to specifically is a trait that the current generation of tyres have – in that how they behave over a full race stint is entirely dependent on how they are treated in their first few laps out of the pits.

If you go too hard too early, the tyres can overheat and lose performance. But go too slow out of the pits for a nice gentle introduction, then you risk losing track position.

There was perhaps no greater example of this playing out than the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Charles Leclerc’s tyres fell away in the closing stages after he had been forced to push hard early in the final stint as he battled with Oscar Piastri.

That late drama was in contrast to drivers like Sainz and George Russell, whose tyres came alive as they had gone easy on them initially.

As Sainz said about this dilemma between pushing hard or going easy: “It’s a very fine line, very tight method to apply.

“You have to play a bit of the Pirelli magic, depending on the track layout and tarmac, even the compounds, as some compounds are more sensitive to them than others.

Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“You need to then put the strategy into perspective, evaluate if it’s going to pay off to do it now, or is the undercut/overcut too important to risk that introduction.

“You have so many things to consider during those first three laps of the stint: whether you want to spend your coins on those laps or you want to spend them later in the race.

“It’s very easy to misjudge, because you never know what’s going to happen in the future. And you might have wasted your coins in something that was not worth it.”

So what is really going on here to trigger this phenomenon?

The key element of this ‘Pirelli magic’ relates to tyre temperatures, and how that can be so heavily influenced by the introduction of fresh rubber.

As Pirelli’s head of F1 and car racing Mario Isola said: “It’s a matter of thermal behaviour of the compound.

“The transition between 70 degrees [which the tyres are warmed to in the blankets] and the running pressure is quite important because you modify the chemical links in the compound, and this can generate thermal degradation.

“If you introduce the tyre in a gentle way for the first couple of laps, you shock the tyre less, you stress the tyre less and you have less degradation.”

As the above graph shows, giving the tyre an easier introduction means the surface temperature does not spike, and that has long-term benefits for the more crucial carcass temp.

Isola added: “It’s mostly about the chemicals. If you put a lot of energy into the tyre and a lot of heat, then you modify your chemical links and this is generating more degradation.”

But while the theory of this ‘Pirelli magic’ is clear, actually being able to deliver it is not so straightforward, because it is not as simple as telling the driver to take it easy for the first laps out of the pits.

Isola added: “It’s not a matter of going slower, because sometimes you need to push a bit more to heat the front tyres.

“So it depends on the set-up of the car. It depends how much you want to protect the rear tyres. If you protect the rear tyres a lot, then you need to heat up the front tyres, so you need to push a bit more. If you slow down too much then the risk is that you don’t have the tyres ready.

“I’m sure it’s a challenge for the teams. They have engineers that are dedicated to understanding how the tyres work and how they can extract the peak performance from the tyres.

“I know that all the teams are instructing their drivers on how to do the out-lap in order to get the best from the tyres. They have the temperatures on the steering wheel, so they know how much they have to push and how much they have to back off in order to have the tyres ready when they want.”

Mario Isola, Racing Manager, Pirelli Motorsport, in the team principals Press Conference

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

It is little wonder that Haas devoted a lot of its running at the pre-season Bahrain test to focusing on this area of race performance.

Team boss Ayao Komatsu said: “For the first two days we thoroughly, thoroughly focused on that.

“That was both from the engineering side, defining how to manage it, and then drivers to execute it as well, and how to feel it.

“We wanted to know that if you do different management, this is the result of it in terms of tyre degradation. It was a team effort and we are still learning.”

But while the ‘Pirelli magic’ is a key focus for everyone now, Isola is clear on one thing: it has become relevant only because other areas of the cars are no longer making the difference.

“It is about how competitive the championship is right now,” he said. “The Pirelli magic is not Pirelli magic, as we are using the same compounds that we used last year when no one was talking about this.

“If you have a big advantage like Max [Verstappen] a few years ago, then you don’t really care if you are in the peak of grip or close to it.

“But if you have to fight for a position and you have three or four drivers within a tenth of a second, then you can understand how important it is to stay in the peak of the grip.”

It is also fair to say that the task is never-ending and getting the ‘Pirelli magic’ spot on one weekend is no guarantee you will get it right the next.

As Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough said: “That’s the balance between my tyre engineers, my strategy engineers, and my drivers that I am juggling the whole time. It’s different track to track, compound to compound.

“So that is what you’re trying to learn on a Friday. So we sort of go into Friday with a ‘Mr. Tyres wants this to happen’ and ‘Mr. Strategy wants this to happen’. What do we agree is the best plan? Then we try to do that…”

World number one Iga Swiatek says she is “very excited” to get to work with Wim Fissette after appointing the Belgian as her new coach.

Swiatek, 23, parted ways with Tomasz Wiktorowski earlier this month after three seasons together with the Pole.

Fissette, 44, has worked with former Grand Slam winners Kim Clijsters and Angelique Kerber during his coaching career.

He split with Naomi Osaka in September, having helped the 26-year-old to two of her four Grand Slam titles over two spells with the Japanese star.

“I want to say that I’m very excited and looking forward to working with Wim,” Swiatek said on Instagram.

“I’m preparing for the WTA finals but my perspective is, as always, long term, not short term.

“I said many times that my career is a marathon, not a sprint, and I’m working, operating and making decisions with this approach.”

Swiatek added that Fissette “seems to have a great attitude, vision and huge experience at the very top level of tennis”.

The Pole’s split with Wiktorowski came after winning four of her five Grand Slams with the 43-year-old – including this year’s French Open.

However, she was unhappy with her hard court performances this season and felt the time was right for a change.

Local favourite Jack Miller believes any result is possible at this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, given the nature of the Phillip Island venue as well as the weather forecast.

“I think anything is realistic,” said the struggling factory KTM rider ahead of the race weekend, which takes place on a fast track seen as one of the best tests of pure rider ability on the calendar.

“As we have seen many a year here at the island, it’s one of those tracks where even if you are having some slight issues or whatever, you can mask it a little bit.”

This was a sentiment echoed by reigning world champion and reigning champion Francesco Bagnaia, who admitted it will be harder for the Ducatis to exert their advantage at the seaside circuit.

“This track is good for everybody,” said the factory Ducati rider. “The bike here makes less difference compared to other tracks because it’s very fast and it’s more difficult to make the difference. [It’s unlikely we will] see somebody opening up a gap.”

Jack Miller, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Despite growing up in the far friendlier climate of Queensland, Miller sees the cold rain and wind expected on Friday and Saturday as an additional opportunity to sneak an upset over the dominant Ducatis.

“It looks like the weather conditions are going to be iffy throughout at least Friday and Saturday,” said Miller. “And the less dry track time, the better for me.

“I feel like we always hit the ground running, but we’ve been struggling throughout the season to make progress from FP1.

“So the least amount of dry track time will help, because our speed is generally there from the get-go – it’s just how to make those micro-improvements through the weekend.

“Fingers crossed, we can get away to a solid weekend.”

Miller has battled with his KTM for much of the season, leaving Tech 3’s Pedro Acosta and occasionally Miller’s factory team-mate Brad Binder to lead the Austrian manufacturer’s challenge to Ducati.

Acosta secured a first pole position at the last round in Japan, but crashed out of both the sprint and the grand prix whilst in contention for a breakthrough win.

“There’s no hiding the fact that I’ve had my issues,” said Miller. “But the boys [Acosta and Binder] are doing a fantastic job being able to ride around it and still put the bike where it needs to be on Saturday and Sunday.”