Norris surprised by victory: I wasn’t expecting much from this race

Lando Norris and McLaren returned to the top step of the podium after several underwhelming weekends. The team completed its upgrade rollout in Brazil and showed strong pace at Interlagos, although the British champion felt it did not necessarily have the fastest car.

Despite that success, McLaren still trails Red Bull in the fight for third in the constructors’ championship. Second place is theoretically still in play, but despite a nightmare weekend, Ferrari remains very well placed to secure the runner-up spot.

For now, though, McLaren is above all enjoying a deserved victory. In these conditions, you do not necessarily need the fastest car, but you do need to change tyres at the right time, stay consistent and, above all, keep the car on the track. Norris and McLaren did all of that on Sunday.

“A day like today, you just got to try and stay in the race for as long as possible. On pure pace, I wasn’t expecting a lot,” said Norris. “I knew we had a good car today, but it was clear that, like on the intermediates especially, the Mercs were very, very quick and a little bit too quick for me.”

“But on a day like today, you need to be consistent. You need to not make mistakes. You’ve got to get on the right tyre at the right time, which I feel like we did a very good job of today,” Lando continued.

“So it was, yeah, it was tough. It was very tough. Not the best first lap, but when I had an opportunity to put Kimi under pressure on the slick, boxing one lap earlier gave myself a chance to attack him. You know, part of it is he has to push, and obviously he made a mistake and I could capitalize on that, so it was part of the racing situation today,” Norris added.

McLaren had excellent pace on Sunday, though. When the rain returned in the closing stages, it was not wet-weather master Max Verstappen who was the fastest man on track, but Lando. He has shown on several occasions this season that he is perhaps somewhat underrated as a champion. His performance in Brazil, however, was unquestionably worthy of one.

The result in Brazil also offers great promise for the future. “I just want to win very badly,” declared Norris. “I just want to be at the car we can fight for a world championship with, which we’ve not had throughout this year. There’s been certain moments where I would say we’ve had a car we could fight for wins with, and we did it today. We did it in a few other races in the middle part of this season, but that’s not good enough. You need a car that can fight through a whole year, and you need a consistent car. You need one where you can deliver week after week, and that’s something we’re still working on.”

“So it’s more, I want to end well, but more than anything, the team want to end the season on a high after a very difficult start, and they’re still working very hard to try and figure things out and bring some of the upgrades we had this weekend. Like, it’s hard to quantify how much it helps, but it helps, and it definitely adds to a result like we had today. So I thank them. They played the biggest role in everything. But we still need more. It’s as simple as that. We still need more. We’re still not happy at the level that we are, even if we can win. We still want to make improvements, and it’s something we need to continue to try and do if we want to fight next year,” said Lando.