After 15 podiums without a victory, Lando Norris became a grand prix winner – and he outpaced Max Verstappen to do so
ALEX KALINAUCKAS
FORMULA 1
He stank of champagne. Lando Norris, bouncing into the press conference room in the bowels of Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, was soaked in Formula 1 glory. After taking a famous first grand prix win in Miami’s third race weekend, he’d wanted “to keep all my champagne on me”. A quick Lewis Hamilton-style change to a more glamorous outfit was eschewed, Norris resplendent in the already sweat-steeped overalls he’d worn for 57 boiling laps last Sunday.
For 31 of those, he led. As he crossed the line to finally take the chequered flag at the head of an F1 pack after 124 attempts – sprints and all – he clinched McLaren’s first GP win since that famous day he had backed off behind Daniel Ricciardo at Monza in 2021. His Sochi near-miss to Hamilton next time out was 57 race weekends back; Oscar Piastri’s triumph in the Qatar sprint barely seven months ago.
Norris selected that moment as the “one opportunity” to win he’d definitively missed in all that time since the 2021 Russian GP. But it was another episode involving his Australian team-mate that went a long way towards securing this long-awaited victory. The mid-race safety car swung the contest irreversibly in Norris’s favour – that cannot be denied. But there were three additional factors that combined to make him a victory contender even without fate finally shining back upon him, 952 days since the Sochi sun had disappeared in that devastating rainstorm.
1. Piastri’s pass on Leclerc proves pivotal
The driver who had the second highest Miami GP laps-led total, inevitably, was Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. He ended the day with 22 tours at the head of the pack. But for just the fifth time in the past 29 F1 weekends, he didn’t lead the last. And he nearly didn’t reach the end of the first, either.
Verstappen, starting from his second pole of the weekend, shot clear off the line, swinging right when the lights went out. This turned out to be unnecessary, since his front row partner Charles Leclerc was slow away. As the Ferrari hit wheelspin “as soon as I let [off ] the clutch”, in the words of Leclerc, Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull stole to the far right, close to the pitwall that Donald Trump had plodded by just minutes earlier, then brake
