Piastri gives Norris victory in sprint race in Brazil: McLaren orders to go after Max starts

In the absence of 4 Grand Prizes are up for grabsthe time has come for McLaren to act. Lando Norris faces the Brazilian F1 GP 47 points behind leader Max Verstappen and he needs to achieve maximum points this weekend to put pressure on the Dutchman. And McLaren and Landau They started to do it from the sprint race this Saturday, although with the application of team orders that was too dangerous and almost ended in a mistake.

Lando Norris won 8 points awarded to the winner of the sprint race, for the 7 taken by Piastri as second and the 6 obtained by an aggressive Max Verstappen, who overtook Leclerc (4th) and ended up in serious rider condition. an Oscar who had to defend himself to prevent his teammate’s biggest rival for the title from adding another extra point.

This way, Norris scratched two more points in fighting for the crown with the Dutch, which is 45 points away from this Sunday’s race in Brazil and 3 more Grands Prix (with another sprint event).

Norris was nervous

His teammate passed Lando Norris Oscar Piastri in sprint qualifying on Friday and it was clear that the team would have to change the positions of its drivers on the track at one point or another. That’s what they talked about in the morning meeting. However, Leclerc and Verstappen were behind and the orange team had to pick the right moment to do it without paying double in the sprint race.

A good moment may have been at the beginning, but Oscar did everything and the Englishman had no choice. The most logical thing is to do it in the first laps, taking advantage of the fact that Leclerc is fighting with Max Verstappen for third place, above all, to prevent Lando Norris from damaging his tires by riding close in Piastri. But that didn’t happen.

The Brit was starting to get nervous. “I’m almost there”he said on the radio on lap 5. “Ok, understood,” replied his engineer, while Leclerc was almost 2 seconds behind. But at McLaren they doubt again, too much. They struggled to make an exchange of positions that would jeopardize their position with Charles and Max. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. We’ve talked about it,” Lando answered. while Piastri set his personal fastest lap.

Since then, it seems like that Things for Norris got complicated in a completely incomprehensible and avoidable way. They lost a clear option to exchange positions and Leclerc and Verstappen stuck to Lando’s rear wing.

Finally Norris, with a better rhythm, gets away and Oscar lifts his leg so they can both switch positions. It happened on lap 22. Piastri let Lando pass for the Englishman to add another point for a total of 8 points.

McLaren, near miss

However, McLaren did just fine. This could be a genuine mistake. And just a few seconds later the ‘Virtual Safety Car’ regime was entered, something that prevented them from changing position.

On the other hand, what McLaren failed to realize was that by allowing Norris to get away from Piastri’s DRS when he was second, what they were doing was giving false hope to a Leclerc who was third and thought he could chase Lando .

That was done Charles drained his battery power unable to follow the McLaren and gave Verstappen, with more top speed and more battery, the wings to attack Leclerc. Verstappen finished third and thus gained a point that Norris would regain thanks to Piastri. The world champion’s radio was remarkable when he saw that Charles was losing sight of the McLarens: “Please! Charles, so many mistakes,” he exclaimed. Max soon overtook the Monegasque and, after a ‘Virtual Safety Car’, the race continued on the final lap.

Verstappen tried to pass Piastri but the Englishman closed him down at the limit. that’s it save 1-2 for McLaren allowing the English to also gain air in the Constructors’ World Championship in their tight battle with Ferrari and Red Bull

Sainz, 5th; Alonso,

Carlos Sainz finished 5th, in the same position he started. It seemed that the man from Madrid bet on managing the medium tire at the start of the race, but what happened, As Sainz admitted, “he made a lot of mistakes at the beginning because of balance problems in the first laps.”

Carlos does not have the pace to chase down the top four and will have to look for a change in configuration for this afternoon’s classification. It was in no man’s land, as Russell finished 5 seconds behind the Spaniard.

In its part, Fernando Alonso finished 18thaway from some sprint race points I knew I couldn’t reach. As was the case in Austin, in Brazil they preferred to use this sprint race to carry out experiments and even have different parts than the ones they will use in qualifying this afternoon so as not to break them.