The Saturday in F1 Brazil GP was intense in the sprint with the incidents, but Lando Norris maintained fine run along with Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
It was a good day for McLaren’s Lando Norris in the end on Saturday of F1 Brazil GP at Interlagos. He not only took the win in sprint, he followed it up with pole for the main race as well despite finishing P10 after first attempt. He was being chased by Mercedes’ Andrea Kimi Antonelli all-through.
The Italian almost had upperhand in sprint due to late struggle for Norris, but the Brit hung on. Antonelli gave him a chase in F1 qualifying as well but fell short. Crucially, he didn’t switch to medium tyres in Q3 when teammate George Russell did, despite having a thought about it.
The soft tyres worked for him and stuck with it, unlike Russell who had medium tyres as his preferred one. Norris’ teammate Oscar Pastri rued silly error in F1 sprint crash. He felt good all-through the weekend, but not on the soft compound which is why he could only manage fourth in the end.
With the points deficit only growing, Piastri aims to bridge the gap by at least finishing second if not victory. For Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc didn’t understand how the turnaround happened for him to be third. He had a good run in sprint finishing in the Top 5, but is wary of his pace.
He feels Mercedes to be stronger, as did Lewis Hamilton. The Brit was not too chatty after Q2 exit, noting that the tyre preparation didn’t work for him at all. Despite the sprint recovery, he is not too optimistic about the same in the race, especially in his quest for a F1 podium.
The heavy loss came for Red Bull when Max Verstappen was knocked out in Q1 for the first time in many years on pure pace. Nothing worked for the Dutchman after changes from sprint to F1 qualifying. Some things did for Yuki Tsunoda, but the lack of grip left him P19 on the grid.
Norris: “Certainly a lot trickier than I would have liked. I mean, for both reasons. One, because the conditions were tough. The first lap going up the hill, knowing how much to lift, a couple of little moments, and then obviously Turn 1 braking always being pretty difficult and just not wanting to ever take too much of a risk. But, at the second point, just not being quite quick enough. In the second part of the race on the Softs, Kimi was quick. It was always like 1.2s down to 1. I made a bit of a mistake into Turn 4 on one of the laps. So, yeah, just didn’t plan for it being quite as difficult as it was today, but we held on. Difficult for many reasons, but that’s part of it. Will said, “Do you want a soft?” and I said, “Yeah.” That was the decision. Regarding the moment, I mean, it’s a kerb you always use in quali. We use it a lot.
“Obviously, when it’s wet conditions like this, you kinda want to stay off all the kerbs. So I ran a little bit wide, and I saw the water come onto the track. But, yeah, that was it. As for qualifying, it was for sure more stressful than I would have liked, especially because we’ve been very quick all weekend. Just didn’t need that. I don’t really know how it happened. I looked at the data after, quickly, between the two runs, and I braked earlier with less pressure, and still somehow locked up. So yeah, a bit weird. Maybe a bit of wind or something. But yeah, that certainly put a little bit more pressure on my final lap, and I saw the others improving — but not a lot. It was just difficult again, just with the track conditions, the wind, everything — hard to get a nice feeling out there. So again, I didn’t know if I was up or down on my delta, so I was a bit stressed. But when I went over the line and saw the lap, I was pretty happy. And when I saw no one running quicker, even happier. They didn’t need to, because they were quicker. We changed a good amount, I would say. I don’t know what is a lot and what is not nowadays, you know, but like, we never change that much — you’re talking a little bit of ride height, a little bit of roll bars or something.
“So you’re talking always quite small, but let’s say probably more than I think we’ve changed in the past between a Friday-Saturday Sprint weekend. As for the race, it depends. I mean, confident in what? I think in our race pace tomorrow — not the most I’ve had. I was certainly more confident in Mexico. I think after this morning, with the Mercedes pace and Kimi’s pace, it certainly lowered my confidence level altogether. But we’re still quick. We’ve still got that little advantage in qualifying, and I really hope that we can continue that into the race tomorrow. But the weather is going to change again — I think it’s meant to be even colder, which might suit them even more.
“And the wind is meant to change also. So it’s difficult. Every track is so different. The feeling I have on one track is different to the next and those kinds of things. But I just feel like I’m doing a good job. I’m driving well. Before, earlier in the season, I would just have weaknesses, and I feel like I’ve, let’s say, I’ve maybe still got some here and there, but I’ve lessened them, they’re not like one tenth now — it’s two hundredths. So when I can put together the good parts and have those not-so-bad parts, things go very well.”
Antonelli: “It was a bit like Lando. Bono said if I wanted to keep the tyre or not, and I said no, I’m going to switch to the Medium. The decision to go to the Soft at the start of the race was mainly because it was still quite wet. And, you know, despite the surface temp going up during the lap, with the wet part, they will cool down. So we were expecting the Soft to hold on until the end. We were also trying to have a little advantage in the first few laps. But then obviously with the red flag, we decided to go on the Medium because yesterday, to be honest, the Medium felt really good. So we decided to go on the Medium also because the track was basically fully dry and also to be able to give it a big push. Well, I tried. Obviously, when he did the mistake in four, I was very close.
“But it’s always a bit hard to follow and especially with the wind changing, traction out of T10 and going down to T11 was very tricky. I couldn’t really stay as close as I wanted there, but still, it was a fun race, and now we’re focused on qualifying. I think I saw Lando going wide and water came up and actually had a lot of water going into my visor. But I was just trying to stay away from kerbs during the whole race because it was very tricky, especially at the beginning. So especially when I saw him lifting water, I tried to take a bit more care just to avoid any spin or moments, because obviously, especially in the beginning the last sector and Sector 1, it was the wettest. And, yeah, it was really crucial to make it tidy in order to make it through as well. In qualifying, it was a very tricky session. To be honest the wind was not the best today — it was a bit more of a pain in the ass around the lap, to be fair. But still, the last lap in Q3 was quite decent. I locked up a little bit the rear in the last corner, but despite that little mistake, I don’t think it would have been — Lando would have still been fastest.
“So yeah, just not the perfect lap, but still good for P2 and we have a good opportunity tomorrow. So much. We went also to Monza — no, I’m joking. To be honest, we didn’t change it, if I have to be fair, because tomorrow the way the wind is going to change again — it’s going to go back to what it was on Friday. So, yeah, to be fair, we didn’t change anything. For strategy, no, we definitely thought about putting the Medium in qualifying because even yesterday, the Medium felt basically the same as the Soft. The jump from Medium to Soft was very little. Also today in the Sprint, the Medium felt better than the Soft — even in the first few laps, the grip just felt better, the tyre felt more robust, especially throughout the whole lap. So definitely, we had a thought about it because we thought that there was not much of a gap.
“But I thought as well that because I felt good on the Soft, I thought it would be better to keep it for tomorrow. Obviously, we have the new tyres, so that’s good — especially for the start. So I think that was the right choice in the end. For the race, we’ve seen many races so far this season that the start and track position can play a massive role for the rest of the race. Of course, Lando has been starting very strong recently, so we need something exceptional. But on my side, I just try to do a normal start, not try to do too much, and then at least hold position. Then we’ll see from there.”
Russell: “Yeah, it was definitely a strong race. I think we obviously had a good qualifying yesterday, and we seemed to be sort of second best after the McLarens. I think the Medium tyre was the better of the two today. Kimi and I probably struggled a little bit at the beginning, but then it was good after the red flag. So, pretty pleased with that. In qualifying, on my side, P6 is not where I wanted to be today. I struggled a lot to put the Soft tyres in the right window and couldn’t find the necessary grip to put a good lap together. With only one hour of practice yesterday and the changing weather conditions overnight, making both Soft and Medium tyres perform proved challenging. Whilst starting from the third row is far from ideal, we are ahead of one Ferrari and both Red Bulls.”
Piastri: “I used [the kerb] a little bit the lap before and yeah, had no problems with it. Looking back, a couple of guys ahead also used it and potentially put a bit more water where I went. I probably shouldn’t have been on the kerb anyway, but I think the track was in a different state than the lap before as well and clearly I wasn’t the only one that got caught out by that. A combination of few things but ultimately, just one of those things. I would say just a normal kind of ramping up, I was just a little bit wide, but nothing major. And I took the same line as the cars ahead, or certainly one of the cars ahead, and unfortunately, the consequences were, were a lot bigger. It clearly splashed up quite a lot of water when that happened. Again, I probably shouldn’t have been on the kerb, but a bit unfortunate that the consequences were so high. I kind of went through it all and assessed what happened.
“Once I was comfortable with what had happened, and you just go back into qualifying mode. It is very different to sprint race to a normal race, so just trying to focus on that, the qualifying session itself wasn’t easy, a bit of a bizarre session and weekend with the soft tyre just not working for some reason. To have pretty much zero lap time improvement through Q1, Q2, and Q3 is quite weird. Just feels like things are not flowing that easily at the moment. I had pretty good confidence in the car yesterday. Today felt like it was a bit trickier for everybody, and I just struggled to get the most out of the car. For the race, just try and pass a few cars. That’s all I can try and do. Just try and capitalise on any opportunities that come up and see what happens. We’ll have to wait and see. It did look relatively tough in the Sprint but also it was quite wet offline which made things tough. I think there’s also a bit of a question on what tyres to use because the soft has not looked great. It’s not been good in qualifying and it’s not looked great in the Sprint either. I think there’s a bit of a question mark on that too.
“Maybe that will give me some opportunities. I think in Austin and Mexico there were clearly some things to learn and just some things that I wasn’t very naturally comfortable with that I had to adapt to. This weekend, certainly yesterday, things felt much more normal. From the first lap of practice I felt comfortable, the lap time was coming easily. Today was a little bit more tricky in terms of the conditions and just trying to get everything out of it, but I don’t think there’s been the same issues this weekend. I’ve still got the belief that I can go out and win races and win the championship but obviously things are not coming as easy as I’d like at the moment. Not necessarily.
“I think ultimately I want to be able to learn what’s been lacking in different sessions, and it’s not always been the same thing. And I think once I know that and I sort that out, then that’s going to give me much more satisfaction than if I hang on for a good result or something like that. For me, just trying to understand as much as I can, learn as much as I can, is going to be helpful for not just this year, but for the rest of my career too. So just trying to take any lesson I can, and there’s quite a few of them at the moment.”
Leclerc: “I don’t want to over-exaggerate the turnaround that we’ve had, because we’re only speaking about a tenth and a half maybe. But the thing is that this weekend, a tenth and a half means out of Q1 or inside Q3. I think where we did a really good job is by executing everything perfectly from Q1 to Q3, because we knew that we were… I mean, it’s been a very difficult weekend since FP1, and we knew that we would struggle to get to Q2 and then Q3. But we did everything perfect. So I’m very happy about that. We changed the car a little bit from this morning, and that helped us to do a step forward as well.
“So yeah, altogether, to start P3 — I think we should be really satisfied with that because I don’t think anybody of us expected that after such a difficult beginning of the weekend. I felt it in Austin and Mexico. Maybe this weekend a little bit less. This weekend has been a very, very challenging weekend, and I think that hides a little bit the struggles that we’ve had this weekend. But in race pace, we seem to be pretty strong. We were stuck behind Fernando, but I think the pace was pretty good on the one lap I had in clear air. So I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”
Hamilton: “The set-up is fine, just couldn’t get the tyres working. Tyre temps. It’s all done in the garage. I don’t know, I can’t remember if it’s the same problem as before, it’s not the same, I think the execution in terms of the times we got out and everything is fine, it’s just the rears are at a place that I can’t get to temperature for them to stop that. Not really, just that you can’t overtake. Um… not great, not great [after two qualifyings]. I am [motivated], yeah, I have been all season but it just continues to go back every weekend, so yeah, I’ll get up tomorrow and try again. I’m not expecting anything to be honest, but we’ll see what happens, it’s another write-off weekend I guess.”
Verstappen: “We need to understand what our problems are first of all. I mean, it’s just not been good. I mean, it seems like we don’t really understand why it’s going that way. I had just no grip. We changed a few things on the car and it didn’t work. So that’s something that we need to figure out. We don’t know. I mean, nothing really seems to work. We change a lot on the car and yeah, we just don’t understand. Something is clearly just not working for us. Even with the changes of the set-up, normally you would feel some kind of reaction, but it doesn’t. So, yeah, something is just really off. But there’s a lack of information. I don’t know.
“I mean, there’s so many things that we need to get right, I guess. So we’ll look overnight again, I guess, to try something or understand something. Similar I would say, something is just not switching on in our car at the moment. We used two different floors, so… Clearly, that is not it. Different circumstances [to last year]. We can forget about [the championship]. Yes, for sure. From where we are starting, that is not going to work and with this kind of performances, I mean, forget about it. But it’s important to get answers on why the car is… For sure, yeah. Definitely something is off and we don’t seem to understand how to fix it at the moment.”
The loss of multiple cars allowed for double Top 10 for Visa Cash App RB, with Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson both making in. But they aren’t sure how they managed to improve the car, considering that they were still learning about it due to lack of mileage.
Hadjar termed it as a crucial race in the battle to retain P6 in the constructors’, while Lawson shared his thoughts on the clash with Haas’ Oliver Bearman in the F1 sprint. The Brit had no words after both got separate penalties to be on nine (Bearman) and eight (Lawson) penalty points.
The Brit had a mega qualifying, though, until Q3 when things didn’t work as same and he was left only eighth in the end after running as high as P1. Teammate Esteban Ocon had another Q1 exit as he searches for answers as to why his qualifying pace has dipped hugely.
Alpine’s Pierre Gasly had some joy to make it in Q3. For some reason, – even unknown to him and the team – he has been on-song in Brazil, with the car working well too. He snatched a point in F1 sprint, and there is hope for more in the grand prix. Teammate Franco Colapinto struggled, sthough.
He had a similar crash like Piastri in sprint, which caught out Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg as well. The German was pleased with the work done to finish in Q3 – his first of F1 2025. Teammate Gabriel Bortoleto couldn’t make it despite extra work to repair the car between sprint and qualifying.
When asked about the risk, Bortoleto elaborated on trying something now to learn from it. His incident also caught Williams’ Alexander Albon out, but his and Carlos Sainz’s lack of pace was down to different reasons, as they struggled to find any pace despite trying multiple set-ups.
Even though the track doesn’t suit them, they were still slightly behind their competitors. Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso was happy with the sprint points defending the Ferrari and was fine to be P11, even though he missed Q3. Teammate Lance Stroll complained of grip issues all-through.
Bearman: “I don’t think it was down to that [that I went early], there’s always small things. For me the great difficulty was that I had great feeling throughout Q1 and Q2 and it just wasn’t quite there in Q3. I saw a lot of people struggling and out of position on that soft tyre, it seemed to be a difficult tyre, maybe we were too hot with it and in Q3, I was doing slightly faster out laps…because the two laps I did in Q3, I was quite happy with it. I crossed the line very happy and then I see two-tenths slower on my delta compared to what I managed in Q2, so it was really strange. Actually, the prediction was to just to scrape through into Q2, to be where we are is such a great result, I think as much as we had a great performance at the start of quali, I am still happy with P8.
“I think the important thing will be to understand why it works so well in Q1 and Q2 and what we missed in Q3. Even in quali last week, we were still a long way off, I think I was a second off in the end, so to have the performance we did today, the car was working so well in high speed, I had incredible amount of confidence with the car and even in low-speed, it was working very well, so it is a great job, the car is working really well underneath and now I am really looking forward to the race. With Liam, I don’t know, I don’t what to say anymore.”
Lawson: “It’s a great result for the team. When it’s this close, though, you’re going to analyse all the details. We had a really loose car in Turn 1, which honestly only started on the last lap. It’s something that we hadn’t really had during qualifying. So it’s very frustrating. We lost a good chunk of lap time there and it’s cost us quite a few positions. But for the team, it’s a great result to have two cars in Q3. It’s going to be tough, for sure. We don’t really have much of a read on our race car because of today. It’s hard to know. Everybody’s within a tenth at the moment, so it’s extremely close. I didn’t see where Fernando was — oh, he missed Q3!
“They were extremely fast yesterday, so it’s just getting it right on the day. Today we did that. In the sprint, I think he went off in Turn 3 and lost a lot of momentum, so I had a big run. I went to go to his left and he basically moved me across the track and then pushed me in the grass. Then we go into Turn 4 and I’ve just got water all over my left tyres and I can’t stop the car. It’s one of those things that obviously didn’t make a difference to the race in the end. We just had big floor damage and didn’t really get a read on the car.”
Gasly: “It’s been a really good day with our first point since Spa in the Sprint Race this morning and then our first Q3 appearance since Silverstone in Qualifying in the afternoon. It’s really pleasing to see we had the potential to be in the mix today which we will aim to take forwards to tomorrow for the main race. In the Sprint, I felt like I had a car which I could race with. I knew the point was close and I had to fight hard throughout and then go for it on Lance into Turn 1.
“It is just a point but it is a morale boost for everyone at the team. It’s been difficult for us recently and we have some ideas on why we are competitive here but we really need to keep digging for some more answers. In Qualifying, we were only a few hundredths of a second to finishing in the top five. My last run definitely was not my strongest but, even so, we are starting inside the top ten and will aim to consolidate that tomorrow with the aim of another points scoring finish.”
Alonso: “No surprises to be honest. Our strength is always on Friday. We race here 21 years, so we know the track, we know the bumps, we know everything and we maximise on Friday. Then people learn a little bit of the tricks for Saturday and you fall to your natural position. I mean if you had told me yesterday that I would qualify in front of Max and Hamilton, I would have said that it was a pretty good qualifying. So what I mean is that it’s tricky for everybody, it was tricky for us. But if we see the glass half full we are P11, only one place to the points. With a good start, good strategy, everything is possible. Yeah, yeah, points are welcome. I think we’ve been very unlucky in the Sprint. When I saw that everyone was starting on the softs, I thought that P3 maybe was possible in the sprint because the medium for us was definitely stronger.
“Then on the red flag, we have to fit the softs because we don’t have unlimited mediums. The people that started with the softs, they learn and then they put the mediums and then they were flying, like the Ferraris. I think without that red flag, it could have been even better, but three points is three points. No, no way [I could have held back Leclerc]. They were faster and as I said, it was the tyres, the first eight laps of the sprint, we were with the opposite tyres, I think I had more pace on my car when they were on the softs. But yeah, things can happen and we take these three points away and hopefully few more on Sunday.”
Albon: “Overall, the Sprint wasn’t great for us. We were not quite able to get points, so I didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. Unfortunately, with the incident at the end, I picked up some damage from debris, and we had to work quickly to turn the car around before qualifying. We had to switch from our new floor back to an older one, which I think cost us some performance. I’m really glad Gabi is okay though; that was a big crash. “These walls around Sao Paulo, especially into turn one, I had a very similar crash in qualifying last year, and it hurt. So I know he said he’s okay with it. It’s still a big crash.
“Yeah, honestly, I don’t know about the incident itself, I need to review it. I don’t know if I could have done anything to avoid it, but I feel for him. Qualifying was then quite tricky. We made some good changes and I think we did make a step forward with the car, but you can’t really see it. We still don’t have the balance we’re looking for, and that’s causing us to hurt the tyres. We saw the same thing in the Sprint, so we need to look at that and understand our race pace better because it’s so tight in the midfield right now.”
Bortoleto: “Yeah, first of all, I need to congratulate the team because they rebuilt the car from zero and they almost made it work for qualifying. So that’s not easy. They did an amazing job and from what happened from my side, I mean, I tried the first lap, the move on Alex and I managed to succeed but then he overtook me back with DRS. And then, I don’t know, in the second, the second lap I think it was a combination of things, I went for the move, I dive bombed him again and DRS was on. I braked probably a little bit in the wet patches and ended up that the car pointed completely to the left in the wall. And then after that I was just a passenger. You cannot control you… just terrible. It would have been terrible [to hit Alex], yeah. But luckily I didn’t hit him. I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t focus so much on that. I’ve seen videos, photos and data that show a little bit of what happened to the DRS.
“But I mean, I was so focused on getting out in quali that I was not looking at why the crash happened. But now I’m going to go back to the team and understand if that was this case or literally it was a wet patch that I probably hit and, and brake and I spun. That can be easily. So maybe I give you an answer tomorrow but I generally don’t have this answer for you now. No, I’m lucky because I told the doctors, like, I stand up out of the car and obviously I feel a little bit of pain here or there but normal pain, like every other race week and I finish, I always have a little bit in the shoulder here and there and it’s a bit the same. So I’m very lucky because I think I could have been much worse than, I’ve been able to be in one piece talking to you almost running quali, prepared myself, did everything I needed to do. I mean, it’s difficult to say, like obviously we were there, we put the car down, they were lacing myself. But if you want to do things properly, they needed a bit, I don’t know, probably 20, 30 more minutes to make it proper, the car perfect for quali conditions.
“I think if they sent me out it was just to see if the car was actually working because they rebuilded everything. So to see if the engine is running, everything is okay or the car is in one piece, and I think that’s a bit the case. No, I just…I had it clear in my mind that the car had the potential this week to probably achieve that result. We were very close yesterday to each other in FP, in sprint quali. And today to see him in Q3 actually makes me happy because we need the points for the championship that we are fighting against other guys. And obviously it’s difficult because now there are two RBs in Q3 and other guys. But yeah, I’m happy for him because I think, he had moments of the season where I was in Q3 and he was out in Q1. And now he’s been able to put very good laps together and feel comfortable with the car. I’m still comfortable with my car and everything, it’s just that I have not been able to put it together this weekend. But yes, it was there, yeah. For the race, I don’t know. I mean, I’ll try a normal strategy and put some pace on track and try to overtake some people. I told my father this actually today. I think it’s a good question [about trying a move or not]. Unfortunately I’ve been used to fight always in the front in my previous series.
“And now in Formula 1, I don’t have quite there the car yet so I need to fight at some point. And the whole year I think I’ve been backing out and not being able to fight. But I think I need to learn and to test things as well because the day that I hopefully will get a car to fight for championships, I cannot make such mistakes. And I believe things like today creates better drivers, like everyone did. If you see Max Verstappen at the beginning of his career and everything. And coming back to China, I think I was upset with Jack, yes, I think because he literally locked up everything and, and ended up hitting me. But we talked after and it was fine. Obviously in the moment I was very upset. But today I think I made the, the move, the lap before that ended up quite well. We didn’t crash into each other. And today, I don’t know, it was wet, I hit the wall, it was not even Alex and I ended up in the wall. So I asked sorry for him because I saw, my front wing ended up hitting his car. So I don’t know if he had damage from that or not. But yeah, life moves on and I hope I, I will learn from my mistakes in the future as well.”
Here’s crash of Gabriel Bortoleto: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-sao-paulo-gp-sprint-bortoleto-ok-after-high-speed-crash-on-the-final-lap.1848238427147008271
Here’s how F1 Brazil GP qualifying panned out
Here’s how F1 Brazil GP sprint panned out
