Lando Norris has claimed his first Sprint Race victory of the season at the F1 São Paulo GP.
After topping free practice 1, Norris went on to set the fastest lap in qualifying, with Kimi Antonelli and teammate Oscar Piastri behind. The Brit got off the line well, briefly falling under pressure from Antonelli on Lap 2, but soon finding rhythm again.
“It was tough”
The São Paulo Sprint Race featured a red flag after Piastri, Hülkenberg, and Colapinto hit the kerb on Lap 7, spinning into the wall, with Piastri and Colapinto retiring as the rest of the grid headed to the pits. With a rolling race restart, Norris again made a clean getaway and cruised until the closing stages, when Antonelli closed in as Norris began to struggle with tyre wear.
Despite the pressure, Norris held the lead and went on to extend his championship lead by 8 points.
Following the race, Norris said, “It was tough. Yeah, it was tough. I mean, it makes the win a little bit more rewarding when you have a race like this. So especially with Kimi here, he was certainly not making my life easy. But it’s one of those ones where you have to push cause, you know, the guy behind is gonna try and push a little bit more. But it was sketchy. I had a couple of little lifts. But even with the wind, with the wind, it was tricky with the degradation on the tyres was difficult. So, yeah, definitely not an easy race, but probably the race you expect here in Brazil, always a difficult one.”
Norris reflects on tyre struggles
After starting on medium tyres, Norris switched to softs during the red flag intervention before the rolling race restart. He later explained, “Yeah, I mean, it was a struggle. Of course, the softs at the beginning I expected to be better. But I mean, the Mercedes were quick and Kimi kept me under pressure the whole race. So I just expected us to be a little bit better. And we weren’t. I don’t know how much it was down to the tyres or that they just did a good job, they were quick today. So we got some homework to do before quali.”
Eyes on race qualifying
When asked about whether Piastri and he can fight for pole in today’s São Paulo GP qualifying, Norris said, “I’m confident we can do that. You know, I think our quali pace was good.”
He continued by suggesting that anything could happen due to the constantly changing conditions. “But the wind changed a lot today. The conditions are quite different. So today is different to yesterday. Tomorrow is gonna be another day. But they’re [Mercedes] gonna put us under pressure, I’m sure. So yeah, like they said, small gaps, and you’ve got to do some perfect laps,” he concluded, aiming for another pole position around the Autódromo José Carlos Pace circuit.
