Lando Norris won the sprint race in Brazil and reduced the championship gap to Max Verstappen by two points. Both drivers were allowed to race in a healthy McLaren team order, with Oscar Piastri letting Norris have DRS for the majority of the race before they exchanged places towards the end.
The plan for the team was to make the change on the last lap of the race, but the appearance of a safety car threatened their plan. They finally pulled the trigger as a virtual safety car was issued rather quickly after that. Verstappen finished the race in third place.
Race Summary
Oscar Piastri was the one to take pole position for the sprint with Norris sharing the front row with him. Behind the two McLarens was Verstappen who started fourth followed by Carlos Sainz and George Russell who completed the top five. It is interesting to note that both Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton did not qualify in the top ten. Zhou, Stroll and Alonso started from the pit due to changes made to the cars while the top six had used medium compound tires to commence the race.
Verstappen also tried to attack early on but could not get anywhere near Norris as Leclerc blocked him off at turn two. The two McLarens quickly distanced themselves from the rest of the pack with Piastri going on to lead Norris by half a second. Verstappen attempted to pass Leclerc for third but was told to hang back over team radio.
Norris was annoyed in the middle of the race as he was behind his teammate, which implied that he had no idea about their plan. “Doesn’t sound like I’ve got much idea what’s going on here mate. I thought we were done with this,” he replied to his engineer who was asking to stay on that pace. As the race went on, Piastri was told to allow Norris DRS to help with Leclerc however, this was not the case with the rest of the race. McLaren then told both of the drivers not to change their order until the last lap.
