Norris wins sprint as attacking Verstappen tried to ruin McLaren's one-two
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Lando Norris has won the sprint race in Brazil and reduced his gap to Max Verstappen in the World Championship by two points. Despite some stressed-out messages over the team radio, McLaren pretty much perfected the team orders situation in Brazil. Piastri gave Norris DRS for most of the race before swapping the order late in the race.
McLaren had planned to swap the order on the last lap, but a potential safety car threatened their plans. They made the move as a virtual safety car was produced almost immediately after. Verstappen finished in third place.
What happened during the sprint race in Brazil?
Oscar Piastri qualified on pole position for the sprint race. Lando Norris joined the Australian on the front row of the grid. Norris started ahead of Verstappen on Saturday, as the Dutchman finished in P4 in qualifying. Carlos Sainz qualified in P5 ahead of George Russell. Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton failed to reach the top ten in qualifying. Zhou, Stroll and Alonso started from the pitlane due to changes made to their cars. The top six started on used medium tyres.
Verstappen tried to attack at the start but couldn't get close enough to make the move on Norris and Leclerc closed the door at turn two. The two McLaren's broke away immediately, and Piastri created a half-a-second gap on his teammate. Verstappen started to attack Leclerc for third-place but was told to take his time on the team radio.
Norris sounded annoyed over the team radio during the sprint race when he sat behind his McLaren teammate Piastri. Norris seemed to think the plan was a bit different. "I'm not sure what I'm doing here, mate. I thought we spoke about this," Norris told his race engineer, Will Joseph. He replied: "Keep doing what you're doing." Later in the race, Piastri was told to give Norris DRS to help the British driver keep Leclerc in his mirrors. With the threat from the Ferrari driver, McLaren told the drivers to hold positions until the last lap.
Leclerc lost the position on lap 18 to Verstappen. At that point, Verstappen had a 1.6 gap to Norris. Verstappen's progress was halted with the virtual safety car. He attacked again as the green flag came on, but just missed out.