McLaren’s Lando Norris stated he wasn’t proud of winning Saturday’s sprint race at the Brazilian Grand Prix and gaining some points on championship rival, Max Verstappen.
Norris crossed the chequered flag first in Brazil after his team ordered teammate Oscar Piastri, who started the race in pole, to move out of the lead with two laps remaining.
McLaren made the call to swap its cars in order to maximise Norris’ chances in his championship battle with RedBull’s Verstappen, despite Piastri leading the first 21 laps of the race.
“I’m not proud to win a race like I did today,” Norris said afterwards. “I work 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.”
The British driver added, “We want to avoid it as much as much as we can, but at the same time we sign up for this, we have to work together as a team.”
However, radio comms appear to show that Norris expected a swap instruction to come when he’d made an enquiry to the team about an earlier discussion they’d had pre-race.
Then in the 16th lap, an engineer informed Norris that a swap would happen on the final lap. Eventually, the swap happened in the penultimate lap.
This was as a result Nico Hulkenberg’s car stopping at the side of the track on lap 22, an incident that was going to bring out the virtual safety car – which would have made it impossible for Norris to overtake Piastri.
The swap was made successfully before the VSC — under which overtaking is prohibited — ensuring Norris scored eight points while Verstappen, who finished third pending an investigation, scored six points.