Lando Norris said victory at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix was for Gilles de Ferran after winning his first win at the former McLaren sports director’s home race.
De Ferran was with McLaren from 2018 to 2021, and again as an advisor from 2023 until his death at the end of the same year. Norris completed the sprint weekend with victory at Interlagos and said he couldn’t get De Ferran out of his mind while he was leading in front of the Brazilian crowd.
“I had to work for it. I was pushing,” Norris said. “It was a great race. I’m happy to win here in Brazil. Great course, great fans, and this was for Gil, one of my mentors growing up a few years ago. This was for him. I’m sure he would be very proud of all of this, so I was thinking about that as I drove. It was a perfect, perfect weekend.”
Norris started from pole position in both races this weekend and earned maximum points, but says it was not an easy result.
“Honestly, I was pretty happy all weekend,” he said. “Overall it was a great day, a great weekend. I would say it was challenging. It wasn’t completely easy. It was still difficult on the track, but it made things better.”
“I think it was just a well-executed race. Good start, good pit stops, good strategy, decent pace… Today’s pace wasn’t as good as I had hoped, so there were some things to consider, but otherwise I was in the lead in every session where I needed to be in the lead, and that’s why I flew to Brazil.”
Norris won by more than 10 seconds over Kimi Antonelli, but what caught his eye was the performance of Max Verstappen, who emerged from the pit lane to finish just behind Antonelli in third place.
“It’s a great win, but to be honest, looking at Max’s speed today, it’s pretty disappointing that we were faster,” he said. “That’s my heart right now. I’ll probably go see the team and congratulate them and see where we weren’t quick, but that’s me. We’ll see what we can do.”
“Of course, the road (to the championship) is not that far, but as we already saw today, things can change quickly. We just have to focus on ourselves, keep our heads down, ignore everyone and keep pushing.”
