How Norris prevailed in a swift errors tour of Interlagos

Two years ago Max Verstappen delivered one of his greatest-ever drives to win the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos from 17th on the grid, albeit with a little help from the capricious November weather and a conveniently timed red flag. There would be no repeat of that stunning outcome in 2026, although the Dutchman drove with consummate precision in changing conditions to reach second place from 21st on the grid, having been hit with a 30-place grid penalty for taking out-of-quota engine components.

Lando Norris, polesitter then and now, has come a long way since that fateful day, reclaiming the lead from Kimi Antonelli after losing ground at the start this time around and then establishing a position of dominance which he held through a late-race downpour which required a switch back to Pirelli's intermediate tyres. Both Antonelli and his Mercedes team-mate George Russell made critical mistakes in the race which harmed their chances of podium finishes. Both Ferrari drivers came a-cropper, too, though they were in any case making heavier weather than Verstappen of cutting through the field after taking engine penalties of their own.

It was Russell who had been Norris's closest challenger for pole position – in terms of lap time at least – but he started from seventh on the grid after taking a five-place penalty for fitting his fifth internal combustion engine of the season. That promoted Antonelli to the front row and he hooked up better from the initial launch to surge ahead of Norris into Turn 1. Over the following laps he looked like he might follow his world championship triumph with a grand prix victory.

Norris last started on pole in Madrid and his past few races have been a tapestry of woe as the MCL40's lack of consistency snuffed out any hopes he might have nurtured of staging a late-season comeback. Upgrade packages, including another one this weekend, have raised the car's performance ceiling but this race was a masterclass by Norris and the McLaren pitwall.

That didn't appear to be the complexion of the race at first as Norris slipped back to the tune of eight seconds by lap 13. In the drying conditions it became a case of clinging on to the intermediates as long as possible and those who bailed first then acted as the canaries in the coal mine to deliver a clear indicator of the crossover point between intermediates and slicks. Lewis Hamilton was the first to dive in for soft-compound slicks at the end of lap 14, having initially risen as high as ninth from 20th on the grid before his rear intermediates began to cry enough and he slipped back to 14th.

Two laps later and it became palpably clear that those who pitted soonest were enjoying the benefits of getting their tyres up to temperature when in combat with those who pitted later. When Antonelli stopped a lap after Norris, the gap had been neutralised: the McLaren was right on the tail of the Mercedes, and Antonelli began to complain of a peculiar feeling in the car. Race engineer Peter Bonnington assured him it was just down to tyre temperatures but Antonelli insisted he had a suspension problem.

Norris had a fight on to keep Lawson behind him on the opening lap

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Evidence that this was more likely a factor of tyre temperatures was playing out in their wake, where Verstappen, who had already charged through from 21st to fifth ahead of the pitstops, pitted at the same time as Antonelli and emerged alongside Red Bull team-mate Isack Hadjar, who had stopped at the same time as Norris. In the first couple of laps after his stop, Verstappen fell three seconds away from Hadjar, saying later that the difference in his car was "like night and day" after his pit visit.

Russell, meanwhile, had already scuppered his race. Having stopped on the same lap as Norris he spun in the pit exit and cost himself at least 15 seconds, consigning him to a time-sapping set of battles with the likes of Nico Hulkenberg, Oscar Piastri and Liam Lawson.

Antonelli continued to insist there was something wrong with his car, and that it was pulling to one side under acceleration. At the beginning of lap 20 the discombobulated Italian gyrated into the asphalt run-off at Turn 1, ceding the lead to Norris, who began to scamper up the road as Antonelli fell into the hands of Hadjar and Verstappen. Hadjar got the job done at the same place a lap later; three laps after that Antonelli ran wide again at Turn 1, enabling Verstappen to seize the moment and annex third.

"The spin came which still is something I need to look at because I don't know why I lost the rear so quickly as well. Like no warning, nothing" Kimi Antonelli

Hadjar could hit the same peak lap times as Verstappen but lacked his team-mate's consistency and kept leaking time with lairy oversteer moments, particularly through the opening sequence of corners. Ere long Verstappen was on his tail and the order came from the pitwall to let him by.

When a race has started in wet conditions there is no obligation to use both types of dry-weather tyres, so as the race developed the strategists' conversations turned to whether the soft Pirelli could once again be prevailed upon to cover an unusually long stint, perhaps even to the end of the race. Some of the radio traffic to this effect could have been a bluff: when told Norris and his engineers were discussing going to the end on the soft, Verstappen channelled his inner Dawn Penn and replied, "No, no, no…"

Verstappen then stopped at the end of lap 45, while Hadjar was asked if he thought he could reach the chequered flag without stopping again and answered in the affirmative. As has so often been the case in the past, Red Bull wasn't afraid of upping the ante with an aggressive strategy split.

Having cut through the field and allowed by team-mate Hadjar, Verstappen had Norris in his sights

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"Antonelli and Hadjar may be trying to go to the end, so we would have to pass them," Will Joseph told Norris. "Is that OK?" "Yes" came the confident reply.

Regardless of who was bluffing whom, the remainder of the frontrunners then visited the pits: Norris at the end of lap 49, Hadjar a lap later, then Antonelli at the end of lap 54, despite Bonnington saying, "We're just going to hang it out, Kimi - see what comes our way."

Following this pitstop phase Norris consolidated his advantage over Verstappen, pushing it into double figures by lap 60, at which point a drizzle which had just set in began to develop into something more serious. Despite this, Norris continued to pull away.  

A lap later, race control disabled overtake mode and Norris was among the first wave of drivers to head to the pits for intermediates, along with Russell, who had successfully clung on to his first set of slicks until that point. Verstappen, Hadjar and Antonelli followed a lap later, which didn't change the shape of the top three but did mean Antonelli emerged only slightly ahead of Russell, who swiftly overtook to claim fourth place. Antonelli was directed not to resist since he had been released into the path of Franco Colapinto's Alpine in the pitlane and was now under scrutiny from the stewards.

Russell was unable to claw his way into podium contention, though, as Norris finished 14.602s ahead of Verstappen, with Hadjar a further 9.883s adrift. Fourth and fifth for Russell and Antonelli easily secured the constructors' championship for Mercedes, with Piastri a very distant sixth – 56s off his victorious team-mate.

"It was a very tough race - very, very tough," said Norris. "Not the best of launches off the line, but a lot of challenges today with the conditions and going on slicks in the wet is always tough. The main thing today was that I just kept it cool and I did not make any mistakes. I had the pace when I needed to so it was good. Nice to be back on the top step and what a place to do it as well."

Two Turn 1 errors proved costly for Antonelli

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Antonelli continued to blame a mysterious looseness at the rear on the first set of slicks for losing the lead, although his pace improved on his second set of slicks once he was no longer afflicted by the flat spots brought on by his lock-up at Turn 1.

"We were on for the win up to that point," he said. "Also in the lead, once I was able to get some temperature I was getting to the rhythm. But yeah, the spin came which still is something I need to look at because I don't know why I lost the rear so quickly as well. Like no warning, nothing. But already to be fair when I put the soft, I felt something weird with the car. So, we need to check what happened."

When Verstappen emerged from his car, his first port of call was his RB22's rear axle. Not that even a thorough examination of it enlightened him.

"We have to understand why or what went wrong with the car as soon as we went to the slick tyres, because even when I switched back to the inter tyres at the end, the car was night and day different" Max Verstappen

"As soon as I switched to the slicks, I had an extreme amount of oversteer in the car in the high-speed corners, which made it super difficult to drive," he said. "We need to understand if something broke on the car, some kind of aero loss or whatever, because this was not normal. I sit here, of course, very happy with second, but at the same time, I know there was more in it if the car had been in good shape.

"Unfortunately, that was not the case. I actually did most of the race with a car that was not in good shape.

"We have to understand why or what went wrong with the car as soon as we went to the slick tyres, because even when I switched back to the inter tyres at the end, the car was night and day different to my first stint. That shows that there is something wrong."

Norris smashes his champagne bottle on the podium

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