In an interesting twist at the last possible moment of the 19 lap race, Oscar Piastri was handed the higher finishing position as Norris’ personal payback for helping him at the last Sprint in Sao Paulo where he was still in contention for the driver’s title.
The race saw Lando ahead of Oscar for the duration, holding back at several points to allow Oscar into his DRS to defend against the quick car of Russell behind. Despite a few dives from Russell into turn 1, he couldn’t get back past the Australian driver after losing out to him at the start and McLaren’s 1-2 looked secure for the majority.
Lando Norris’ engineer Will Joseph came over the radio on the final lap and told him to “finish in this order, we’re happy” but Lando went against this and personally made the decision to switch with Oscar – a big risk given that just 0.4s separated the top three at the line.
Speaking after the fact, Lando said, “It was probably a bit closer than I was wanting. But I planned to do it since Brazil. Just what I thought was best. It was probably a little bit sketchy, the team told me not to do it, but I thought we could get away with it, and we did.”
Oscar Piastri looked slightly dejected despite being gifted the win, perhaps arising from the way it came about after lacking pace for the race, but said, “it’s nice to have a McLaren 1-2.”
As expected, Lando’s decision made the team a bit nervous on the pitwall but Zak Brown praised the sentiment behind the move; “Lando and Oscar have been great teammates and I think it just showed how much they were helping each other and ultimately racing for the team.”
A 1-2 was exactly what McLaren needed to kick off their weekend where they could clinch the Constructors’ title, now focus shifts to qualifying for the grand prix and aiming for the same from tomorrow’s grand prix.
