How Norris breezed through a stormy Brazil GP despite Verstappen's stunning surge

One of the first things they teach you in Brazil is to treat weather forecasts with some degree of scepticism. While the anticipation of a heavy storm on Saturday had dominated paddock discussions on the Friday night, particularly in response to last year's qualifying wash-out and hurried timetable shuffling, a deluge and a barrage of high winds was taken as a given at some point in the day. The storm did hit Sao Paulo to some degree at least, as it slipped in and out of the city at night like an assassin - at least, one with a sideline in influencing tropical weather.

The orange warning issued by the national meteorological office, then, perhaps did not pertain to that particular storm. Lightning struck twice in both races; Lando Norris ran rampant in both the sprint race and the grand prix to continue his late-season surge of momentum surge, fanning the embers of a nascent breakaway from his championship rivals in Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri. Against the cacophony, Norris enjoyed a comparative bubble of serenity, while Verstappen had to rescue a dismal qualifying session and Piastri fell foul of another weekend tainted by collisions.

After the Austin and Mexico races, Norris's oeuvre was explained by his team principal Andrea Stella, who remarked that the Briton had become increasingly strong at feeling out the traction on low-grip surfaces. By contrast, this is something that has tripped up Piastri; the Australian cannot drive the car in the way that he has become accustomed to on the higher-grip surfaces, forcing him into the position of having to drive with an unfamiliar approach. While the circuit grip had rubbered in over Friday practice, ensuring that Norris and Piastri were within two tenths of each other in sprint qualifying (albeit split by a vastly impressive Andrea Kimi Antonelli), the Saturday night downpour had washed Piastri's hopes away.

The erstwhile championship leader's lap six shunt after clipping a wet kerb at Turn 3 turned a one-point title deficit into a nine-point one. Furthermore, Piastri struggled to get on terms with Norris in qualifying proper; even though Norris botched his Q3 opener on Saturday afternoon, he was able to rattle off a lap good enough for a second pole of the weekend. Piastri was 0.375s adrift and started from fourth.

Norris demonstrated another area that has become much stronger of late: his starts. His getaway from the line was ebullient to ensure that Antonelli, starting on the softs versus Norris's mediums (as seen also in the sprint race), could not mount a surprise attack into the opening handful of corners. By contrast, Piastri was having to fend off a soft-shod Isack Hadjar, who was looking to upgrade his impressive fifth-place start.

When the race was neutralised for a safety car, when Gabriel Bortoleto's coalescence with the wall extinguished the hopes of the home fans occupying Interlagos' hallowed terrain. One might argue that the occasion had got to him over the weekend; while attempting to dazzle the Brazilian with a divebomb pass on Alex Albon in the sprint, his subsequent shunt snowballed into a missed qualifying and a first-lap crash as he was put off his stroke by Lance Stroll at Turn 11. "Gabi" doesn't tend to make those sorts of mistakes, but the urgency to impress was very much gnawing away at him.

Home hero Bortoleto's race was over on the first lap - precipitating the early safety car

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Like the sprint race, Norris had a restart to manage over Antonelli. And, like the sprint, Norris did exactly the same thing: he dragged the field as far as the pit entry while weaving to wrong-foot the cars behind, and then indulged in his moment of leaden-footedness at the last possible opportunity.

And thus precipitated the moment that continued Piastri's string of misery: Antonelli was a bit late to the party on the restart and let Norris slip away, while Piastri and Charles Leclerc attempted to pincer-movement the Italian teenager. When Piastri locked up while trying to thread his car down the inside of the Mercedes, the two made contact, with Antonelli's sudden new course into Turn 1 catching Leclerc completely by surprise. The Ferrari's front-left tyre was ripped off the rim, and the upright now barely hinging on the suspension. The Monegasque, who has surprisingly never stood on the podium before in Brazil, continues his wait for a Sao Paulo top three.

As a result of the incident, Piastri had got ahead of Antonelli - and, after the virtual safety car had been and gone to address Leclerc's stranded car at the Turn 4 marshals' post, was close to Norris' gearbox. However, Piastri could not maintain that upward mobility as Norris roared through the middle sector of the next lap to gap his team-mate by a second, and a 10-second penalty for the Antonelli/Leclerc clash ensured that the Australian was no longer in the hunt for the win. While Piastri challenged George Russell for fourth late on, he was unable to improve on fifth following his penalty, ceding another 15 points to Norris in the championship reckoning to sit 24 points away from the top of the standings.

"We obviously got it wrong, but it's the way we go racing. We take risks and if we don't take that amount of risks, we don't think we'll be able to win. So we took that risk" Laurent Mekies

Norris did have something of a challenge on his hands, however, as he was already on the best tyre: he'd started on the medium, and aimed to exploit that to gather a strong early lead. But McLaren had a choice to make, in attempting to one-stop with a hard tyre, or go for the two-stop and pick up the softs for the second stint. Neither tyre was particularly compelling; the soft was wearing out quite quickly, while the hard had demonstrated little pace when appended to the Aston Martins early in the race. Thus, McLaren opted to give Norris the softs, with the instruction to use them up before a final stint on the mediums.

However, Norris had the spectre of competition to battle against: not from Piastri, and not from Antonelli - but from Verstappen. The reigning champion found the early set-up in his Red Bull to be prone to bouncing in the middle sector, and set-up changes for qualifying to alleviate that ended up having a contrary effect; instead, his RB21 was so far out of its performance window that he was unable to hustle the car beyond the environs of Q1. This prompted Red Bull to a) turn the car upside down, and b) install a new power unit.

"We had finished P4 [in the sprint], but it was effectively a P5 without Oscar's stoppage," Laurent Mekies explained of the earlier set-up mis-steps. "Nobody wanted to settle; we felt the optimum window was not where we were. We tried at that moment to change it before the main qualifying.

"We obviously got it wrong, but it's the way we go racing. We take risks and if we don't take that amount of risks, we don't think we'll be able to win. So we took that risk. It didn't work. It's painful. We got the quali wrong. That's what it is. But again, we have taken a lot of these risks in the past few months. I insist it is the way this team goes racing."

Verstappen's dismal qualifying was turned on its head by Red Bull's overnight changes

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Aside from the suspension tinkering, it was suggested that Verstappen had switched between floors - the gamble on the old-spec floor for qualifying didn't pay off, and thus the team reneged upon that. It was Goldilocks stuff; Verstappen finally got the set-up that was neither too hot nor too cold, and thus proceeded to chew up the midfield pack and spit them out in rampant succession.

An early suspected puncture, following the Antonelli/Leclerc/Piastri ruckus, ended Verstappen's hard-tyre run - which probably helped him more than it hindered him, given the paucity of performance from the C2. Once Verstappen roared through the midfielders, it effectively put him on the same strategic strata as the McLarens and the Mercedes, but with the opportunity to run on mediums until the end.

Verstappen's progress was such that, when Norris stopped for softs, he emerged behind the Red Bull. It didn't take too long for Norris to nip past the Dutchman, who stopped again five laps later to restart his climb back through the pack. Again, it was another massacre to bring him back into podium contention, as the medium pace was far too compelling for the midfielders to resist.

In theory, Verstappen didn't need to stop again; Norris, who was on softs, did - and the pace from the C4 tyre was starting to wind down considerably with degradation. Verstappen was rifling in a series of laps in the 1m13s at this stage, eroding away at the 20-second buffer that Norris needed to emerge from his final stop ahead. Once Verstappen cleared the impressive Oliver Bearman for fourth, it was effectively guaranteed that the Red Bull would remain ahead.

McLaren chose not to sweat this too much, having suspected that both drivers might need to stop again. While Verstappen's stint was impressive, it was by no means certain that the mediums could last for a full 35 laps - and even if they could, the time loss expected through degradation was due to play its part.

After 20 laps on the softs, Norris made his final stop and collected a final set of mediums. While Norris stated that this set of C3s was "not quite as strong" as the brand-new set he'd pressed into service at the start of the race, it was nonetheless a much better tyre than the soft. In stopping, however, he'd ceded an eight-second advantage to Verstappen - but with a 16-lap offset between equivalent compounds. Within three or four laps, Norris was 6.5s behind his title rival; Red Bull, sensing the writing on the wall for Verstappen's victory chances, chose to box the short-term leader for a final blast on softs.

Norris escaped the early melee behind him - one that helped put Piastri 24 points behind him

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"We don't think it was winnable," explained Mekies on the decision to pit later on. "We would probably never know where we would have finished, but obviously it's a discussion that the guys had on the pitwall. At some stage you need to make the call, and the call was made. I think it gave us a chance to have a very strong go at the podium. Ultimately we got it. Maybe one lap more you would get a P2. I don't think there was any way you could have kept a P1 if you just looked at the tyre deg."

Stella elaborated on McLaren's expectation that Red Bull would stop, remarking that "I was hoping so because it made our life a little bit easier," before slipping into his Frank Lampard-ian transition to a serious note. "Jokes apart, today the level of degradation was very high and at some stage I think the tyres just ran out of rubber. I think they knew at Red Bull that it would have been quite a significant gamble to go to the end with the same set and considering the fact that they had a new soft to put on, I think that was the right thing to do."

Norris, then, was clear, but the final podium positions still needed to be decided. Russell had worked his way into third, but escalating brake temperatures meant that he was effectively walking wounded versus the upwardly-mobile Verstappen. Once the Briton had been cleared, it was Antonelli's turn to complete a vastly impressive weekend by mounting a stern defence to dissuade the rampaging bull from making a pass.

Had Verstappen qualified reasonably, Red Bull wouldn't have pulled his car out of parc ferme, and wouldn't have implemented the changes that made his RB21 come to life

Indeed, Verstappen turned in the laps to get within DRS range - but once there, Antonelli was incredibly clever in keeping him behind. Knowing that Verstappen would struggle to follow a little bit more in sector two, the Bologna-born driver aimed to build enough of a buffer through the uphill-downhill transitions, and then expended his battery pack into the exit of Turn 12 - Juncao.

Ensuring that Verstappen was more than 0.7-0.8s coming out of Juncao was the clincher, despite the reigning champion's best efforts. While the DRS helped Verstappen swallow up the gap, Antonelli's use of the energy recovery systems' extra power ensured that the gap rarely went below 0.4s before the Turn 1 braking zone. It was heavy pressure from Verstappen, especially on the final lap, but Antonelli earned all the plaudits laid upon him for locking down second place.

Had Verstappen chanced upon his set-up before qualifying, then he'd surely have won. Yet, it's something of a dichotomy that his team only happened upon it when qualifying had been so dismal; had he qualified reasonably, Red Bull wouldn't have pulled his car out of parc ferme, and wouldn't have implemented the changes that made his RB21 come to life. They say you learn more from your defeats than your victories; Red Bull certainly got a lesson out of its first double-Q1 elimination since the 2006 Japanese Grand Prix.

Norris, too, has suffered his share of defeats this year - now, he's the one in form. The weather warnings that caused millions of phones around Sao Paulo to ping ominously were right about a storm...but certainly not the storm we expected.

Three to go: can Norris continue to build his title lead, or does 2025 have another twist in the tail?

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