Lando Norris of McLaren claimed victory in the sprint race of the Brazilian Grand Prix on Saturday, after his teammate Oscar Piastri, who had been leading solidly until two laps from the end, graciously handed him the win.
Lando Norris (McLaren, winner of the Brazilian GP sprint on Saturday): (Regarding team orders) “I’m not proud of it, but we worked as a team and I thank Oscar (Piastri) for what he did. We did a good job as a team and got the result we were hoping for. Oscar deserved to win but we did what we had to do. Behind him, I was a bit like a yo-yo, falling back, catching up, and the dirty air cost us a lot of time. I think I could have driven faster, but at the same time, I believe it would have been difficult to overtake him. We were faster than the cars behind us.”
Oscar Piastri (McLaren, 2nd): “It was a bit tricky, with a very bumpy track and the racing line was very narrow. But it’s still a great day for the team, with a lot of points, and we hope to score a lot in the race tomorrow (Sunday). I think we can be optimistic, the pace seemed good. The Ferraris were very fast at the start and Max (Verstappen) was at the end of the race. There are a few small things we can improve for the qualifiers and the race.”
Max Verstappen (Red Bull, 3rd): “It was a tricky race, but the pace was very good. I stayed a bit too long behind Charles (Leclerc), and it wasn’t easy to attack him because of the DRS train. I had to wait for a few mistakes and when they came, I was able to take advantage. It was promising in terms of race pace. For the qualifiers, we expect the McLarens to be very fast on a lap, so we’ll try to limit the damage as I have a five-place grid penalty.”
Charles Leclerc (Ferrari, 4th, speaking to Canal+): “We learned a lot. We had very aggressive settings, we knew that, but today (Saturday), it was extremely complicated as a race. We had to take risks and I tried to push at the beginning, but the car was very difficult to drive, so I made a lot of mistakes. The approach for tomorrow (Sunday) will be very different, today, we didn’t have much to lose. I knew that in the best case, we could have been 2nd or 1st, and in the worst case 4th. We lost a point, but we learned a lot for the race.”
Pierre Gasly (Alpine, 7th, speaking to Canal+): “It was a good race, very difficult, but I’m very happy. We started 7th and finished 7th and we managed to keep (Sergio) Perez behind until the end. It was tight and we managed to be the best in the midfield. That’s really good. It was difficult in terms of tires, we degraded a lot, which was different from what we expected.”
