Daniel Ricciardo delivered a stunning drive at Mexico City to seal his team’s best result of the season, but he finished second in the ‘driver of the day’ polls to his former teammate Lando Norris.
Norris surged from 17th to fifth in what commentator Martin Brundle declared “has to be one of Lando’s best drives of his career.”
That included a fantastic overtake on Ricciardo in the latter half of the race, the pair going wheel-to-wheel.
And it’s safe to say that Norris thoroughly enjoyed getting the wood over his former McLaren teammate, as a cheeky swipe in a post-race interview evidenced.
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Lando’s ballsy move over resurgent Dan | 01:17
Asked which of his many overtakes during the race was most enjoyable, Norris told Sky F1: “The one on Daniel. Yeah I mean he’s the ‘king of late braking’, right?”
Norris – who also made the gesture for scare quotes – was sarcastically referring to Ricciardo’s reputation as one of the finest late-brakers in F1.
“We must have been very very close,” Norris continued.
“I braked earlier than I think he thought I would. So then he braked, I just got off the brake and I got him on the outside.
“I would have wanted to hit him if I could. It would have been even more fun,” he added with a laugh.
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But things got even more awkward when Daniel Ricciardo joined a Norris interview with F1.com.
Ricciardo said: “I actually want to ask him [Lando] a few questions. I feel like probably before the red we were looking even better. Did you have really good pace before the red?”
Norris replied yes, with Ricciardo following it up by asking: “Do you think you would have caught me?”
Norris went “Ummm …” before Ricciardo jumped in: “No! Okay, so I could have got fifth! There you go. What a bummer.”
The McLaren driver delivered a witheringly sceptical look before replying: “If I qualified well yesterday I would have been on the podium.”
That saw Ricciardo hit back with a dig at Norris’ qualifying flop: “Yeah what happened yesterday? No – we’ll talk about that later.”
“No I’m happy, I’m happy,” Ricciardo said, before squeezing the shoulder of his ex-teammate and adding: “It’s been a while.”
The pair were all smiles, but the strained conversation hinted towards tension between the former teammates.
Today’s battle, however, had nothing on their duel at Silverstone 2022. The pair – then teammates – were asked by Sky F1 to compete in a race on ‘space hoppers’ – the childhood toy. Ricciardo was well and truly in the lead when Norris jumped off his toy and tried to cheat his way to victory, causing Ricciardo to throw his vehicle at his rival.
Norris was caught flush in the face, in what turned out to be one of the more hilarious battles of their McLaren era.
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