‘Sketchy’ gamble that birthed instant F1 legend… and exposed Lando once and for all

It couldn’t have been set up more perfectly for Lando Norris.

After months of title leader Max Verstappen expertly limiting the damage in a car that was out of sorts, the Dutchman had finally been tripped up, qualifying 17th for the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

Norris, who’d won the sprint a day earlier, would lead the field away from pole position.

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The gap between them was 44 points. It wasn’t inconceivable that Norris would be waltzing into the final three rounds with less than a race win separating him from top spot and momentum all on his side.

But then the lights went out and his fairytale championship run was brought to a swift end.

Verstappen made one of the sport’s greatest comebacks to rise from 17th on the grid — officially; strictly speaking he was 15th on the road — to the lead halfway through the race.

Norris fumbled his way from pole to second to fifth and finally to sixth.

What should have been a glorious day turned into a deeply damaging one, leaving him 62 points adrift of Verstappen and facing final defeat at the next race in Las Vegas.

‘NOT TALENT, JUST LUCK’?

Norris’s appraisal of his afternoon focused largely on a five-lap window approaching half distance on which the outcome pivoted in Verstappen’s favour.

It started with a virtual safety car after Nico Hülkenberg spun off the track at the first turn, which triggered McLaren to pit him for fresh rubber.

A safety car and red flag then ensued, and Verstappen, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, having not yet pitted, were able to change tyres for free in pit lane, earning them track position and demoting Norris off the podium.

“You take a gamble, it’s paid off for them,” he said, per Planet F1. “It’s not talent; it’s just luck.”

“Sometimes it just goes your way. There was nothing we did wrong.

“Staying out was not the right thing to do. It shouldn’t have been red flagged [because of the weather], but obviously there was the crash in the end, which caused the red. That’s life sometimes.”

The decision to stop for fresh rubber had been laps in the making, its origin having been yet another poor getaway from pole that saw Norris immediately demoted to second by George Russell into the first turn.

The Mercedes car was slower around the lap but had a top speed advantage. Norris was able to shadow him closely but was never able to pass.

As his rubber wore and the standing water dispersed, Norris began pushing to ‘box to overtake’ — to undercut Russell with fresh tyres — as a circuit breaker for his frustrating situation.

The team denied his request, having seen other drivers pit and end up stuck in traffic.

Mercedes, however, had been monitoring the situation and was weighing up how best to combat it.

When the virtual safety car offered a chance to cheaply stop Norris, McLaren pounced — and Mercedes pre-empted. Both Russell and Norris made their fateful stops on lap 28.

Four laps later the race would be red flagged for Franco Colapinto’s massive crash.

“Just unlucky,” Norris said.

VERSTAPPEN MADE HIS OWN LUCK

But marking down Verstappen’s victory to the will of the fates isn’t just deeply uncharitable, it’s a misrepresentation of his race.

No driver recovers from so far down the back of the grid to such a dominant victory just because they’re lucky.

His race up until the red flag had been superb. He made up four places immediately on the first lap with a sublime around-the-outside move at Curva do Sol while his rivals tentatively searched for grip, and a series of aggressive, incisive passes brought up to sixth after just 11 laps.

It was from that vantage point, with the lead a little over 10 seconds away, that he and Red Bull Racing made the race-winning decision not to pit for fresh tyres under the virtual safety car.

The rain had been intensifying when Hülkenberg spun off the track, and the forecast suggested it was yet to peak.

Verstappen and his team believed they could see clearly that the race would need to be suspended, convincing them to stay out in difficult conditions in the hope of capitalising.

“I was just very motivated to get a good race and just let the race pan out and see what happens, because in a wet race always some crazy things can happen,” he said.

“We just stayed calm. When some pitted — the rain was coming — we stayed out, which was very sketchy.

“At one point we needed a red flag. It was just undrivable — even on extreme tyres it would have not been possible because of the banking of the track here.”

And the Dutchman wasn’t the only driver who could see the red flags looming.

Russell had thought exactly the same thing from the lead of the race. Three times he tried to tell his team not to pit him for fresh tyres, but eventually he was overruled and entered the lane, costing him at least a podium finish.

“Obviously those three laps were very, very difficult in the middle, and that’s why I wanted to stay because I felt very, very confident this will go safety car or a red flag,” he said. “Inevitably it did because it was undriveable.

“Where we could have ended up, I don’t know, but I was pretty angry at the time because I wanted to stay out.”

You can argue that the red flag was lucky given it was triggered by Franco Colapinto’s crash rather than the weather, though it took worsening weather for the Williams rookie to lost control in the first place.

Whatever the case, Verstappen and Red Bull Racing had actively chosen to play for the suspension. Norris and McLaren, as well as Mercedes, had not.

They made their own luck, and they were rewarded handsomely.

VERSTAPPEN SHUTS DOWN CHAMPIONSHIP CHALLENGE

It was a performance from the very top shelf. Already it’s been likened to some of the most iconic wins in Formula 1 history, including Ayrton Senna’s famous 1993 European Grand Prix performance at a wet Donnington Park, in which he barged through from fourth to first on the first lap.

“Bernie [Ecclestone, former F1 CEO] rang me after the race and said, ‘I’ve seen all the greats, and that’s one of the very best I’ve ever seen’,” Christian Horner said, per Autosport.

“He’s a bit older than I am and seen a bit more, so high credit from someone like him.”

While Verstappen didn’t put his result in the historical context, he ranked it as his best ahead of his similarly impressive wet-weather drive at the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix, in which he finished on the podium after having dropped to 16th late in the race.

“This one is definitely much more crucial than back in the day,” he said. “There I had nothing to lose. I was not in a championship fight, and I was coming from the back after the strategic mistake we had.

“Now there was a lot more at stake, so I had to be more controlled, more aware of the championship.

“For me, definitely this one is the best one.”

That in itself is an interesting admission. Verstappen’s championship lead has never been anything other than rudely healthy this season. While there was significant potential for a big points loss this weekend, the Dutchman has never given the impression that he was even thinking about the points gap, never mind potentially feeling the pressure of the title fight.

But his 10-race victory drought had clearly been taking its toll. His post-race celebrations said as much.

“Of course, looking at it, it was incredibly important,” he said. “I was expecting to lose points today.

“It’s been tough for us [as a team]. We always kept pushing. We didn’t really understand why the others were so fast, in the race especially.

“I’ve been trying a lot of things to improve the car, and starting P17 this morning, it didn’t look like we were going to win the race again. It’s an incredible result for us — a massive boost for the team, because honestly, it’s been tough.

“But it is also a big strength of the team to stay calm and just try to work on performance and try to improve our situation.

“I’m confident for the last three races that we can fight again, and especially in the race that we will be more competitive.

“From now I just want clean races to the end. I’m not thinking about clinching the championship in Vegas or whatever. I just want clean races.”

NORRIS, McLAREN MUST LEARN FROM BRAZIL DISAPPOINTMENT

Clean races are of course exactly what Norris has lacked, and the Briton’s performance in Sao Paulo was an exemplar for his season and how it’s compared to Verstappen’s campaign.

McLaren has fielded arguably the fastest car in Formula 1 since the Miami Grand Prix in May. For most of that time it’s been quicker than the Red Bull Racing RB20, which became particularly uncompetitive around the mid-season break.

But by dent of errors from the cockpit and mistakes from the pit wall, Norris hasn’t pressed home his advantage.

In Brazil he started from pole with 13 cars between him and his foe. He lost the lead immediately and lost a place to Russell again shortly after winning it around the safety car interruptions.

Then, just as Verstappen completed his recovery by taking the lead from Ocon, Norris locked up and sailed off the road at turn 1, putting himself definitively out of podium contention.

He needed a team order to get into sixth ahead of teammate Oscar Piastri, who had been required to hand him victory in the sprint the day before to bolster his points tally.

It could not have been further removed from Verstappen’s flawless Sunday masterclass with which the Dutchman took his destiny in his own hands and fashioned championship point for himself at the next race.

Of course McLaren’s 2024 season can’t be marked as anything but a success. The team didn’t expect to be able to compete for the constructors championship, never mind be favourite to win it, and Norris’s drivers title tilt came as a bonus.

This team-driver combination hadn’t won a race before this season. Taking on the battle-hardened RBR-Verstappen pairing was always going to be a significant challenge. It’s done commendably well.

But the contrast in Brazil is important all the same, having laid bare everything Norris and McLaren will have to work on next season if they hope to attain the title double that will allude them this season.