Brazil GP: Lando Norris ‘not proud’ of sprint win via team orders

Lando Norris said he was not proud of winning Saturday’s sprint race at the Brazilian Grand Prix after McLaren ordered team-mate Oscar Piastri to drop out of the lead with two laps to go.

McLaren called for swapping cars to maximize Norris’ chances in his title battle with Max Verstappen. After starting on pole ahead of Norris, Piastri led the first 21 laps of the race before the pit wall ordered him to relinquish the position on lap 22 of 24.

“I’m not proud of winning a race like I did today,” Norris said. “I’m working hard to go and do a better job in qualifying (for Sunday’s Grand Prix) later and put myself in a better position for the race.

“We want to avoid it as much as we can, but at the same time we sign up for this, we have to work together as a team. We are told what to do, we have a boss. We do the best we can to help each other .”

It initially appeared that Norris expected the switch to happen earlier in the race, and on lap 7 he radioed the team to say: “I’m not sure what I’m doing here mate. I thought we were talking about this.”

On lap 16, Norris’ engineer told him there would be a change on the final lap, but that plan was abandoned on lap 22 after Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas stopped at the side of the track and it became clear that a VSC would be deployed to recover it.

The switch was successfully made ahead of the VSC – where overtaking is prohibited – and ensured Norris scored eight points, while Verstappen, who finished third pending an investigation, got six points.

“We talked through a lot of different scenarios,” Norris said of McLaren’s advance plans. “It was hard to do that much earlier because the guys behind were pretty close.

“I think there was one lap, but it’s always difficult to suddenly plan it and execute it. So I think we did the best job we could, we won, both cars up there.

“Obviously the (Virtual) Safety Car put (us) in a little bit of a threat and we were lucky we didn’t have to do it after. But there are always those risks at the beginning of the race, the middle of the race, the end of ​​The race. It’s not a straightforward thing ever. So we planned it and we executed it well.