Lando Norris reflects on his first F1 win in Miami GP after coming through from sixth, as Andrea Stella adds his bits in support.
It was long time coming for McLaren’s Norris and it finally happened in F1 Miami GP where the Brit picked up his first win despite having dropped to sixth at the end of Lap 1. He spent the whole first stint behind cars fighting with each other.
But it was decisive for him as he managed to go long and eventually take benefit of the safety car to clear Logan Sargeant’s car. There was a commotion when the safety car picked up Red Bull’s Max Verstappen instead of the actual leader Norris.
And the Brit seemingly gained some time from that too, but the safety car did fall in line. The re-start was a bit slow from Norris as he admitted himself, but once he got into a rhythm, there was holding back as he pulled out a decent gap.
Whether or not Verstappen had issues, Norris looked comfortable on the hard compound and eased into his first F1 win. Of course, he was nervous and so was his team but it was all forgotten once he crossed the chequered flag and the wait of 110 races was done.
It was a weight off his shoulders and also the team who developed the most at the fag end of F1 2023. Norris was greeted by host of drivers as he managed to speak with his parents too. And now, the focus is on winning few more races in 2024.
Team boss Stella too earned his first win as a team boss in the main race. He went through similar nervousness as he explained the last few laps and how they chopped out the plan to pit him late and take the advantage of the safety car.
Victory long-time coming, weight off the shoulders –
Norris: “It felt incredible. I mean, it’s a good crowd as well. The whole team are there. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m meant to say, honestly, but just a lot of smiling, a lot of cheers. A lot of hard work goes into a day like today. But just happiness, me smiling, which is not always the case. But yeah, I mean, I dream of these days sometimes and you never know when they’re going to come towards you. But today was that day. So as much as my mind was going crazy and I was thinking a lot of things, I was also just quiet, you know. It was just a bit lonely out there at times and it’s just nice to kind of reflect on everything you’ve done to get to that point. As much as I want to say no, it’s a yes. To get that first victory is always incredible. And I’ve, of course, had my moments where we’ve been close, and I’ve never been able to convert it into the win.
“But I wasn’t worried. As much as a lot of people doubted that I was going to be able to put it together and win a race, I wasn’t worried. I’ve kind of been more confident than ever this year that I’ve got what it takes and the team have got what it takes and I was patient with it. I’ve just been doing my job and executing my races, executing my qualis, and doing what I can do best. And I knew my time was coming. I said it this morning. It’s not often that I’m optimistic about things. But actually, all weekend, there’s been something, you know? Like, already practice, qualis. We’ve been close. And we were very good on Friday. And there was kind of that spark. And we maybe lost it a little bit into Saturday. But today, it definitely came back and turned into a little fire. So yeah, it was an incredible race.”
P6 on Lap 1 –
Norris: “It was put out very quickly! I kind of had a little flashback to yesterday’s Sprint race when I saw Sergio on the inside. I just thought, ‘OK, let’s try to make it around Turn 1 for once’. So I took it easy. I knew we had good pace, and I knew was in it for the long game. I was behind Checo the whole of the first stint, but my pace at the end of the first stint was the best on track. And I could still see Max. And when you can see Max, there’s hope. And it’s not often that you can see Max on track. So I knew the whole time, even when I was back in sixth, that there could be opportunities, whether there was one Safety Car or something went my way.
“I was very quick at the end of the first stint. I kept my head down. We kept pushing. Everyone boxed from ahead of me, and I could just use all the pace that I had, which was a lot of it. And being able to go so long on the tyres, being able to have the pace I had, turned into that bit of luck, which I’ll happily admit. Sometimes you’ve got to have a bit of luck on your side, and things have got to go your way, and I had that today. I’ll take it happily. and yeah after the Safety Car I could kind of just get my head down and push on and I was confident I could take it from there.”
Safety car period, holding off Verstappen –
Norris: “I’ve not done many Safety Car restarts from the front for a good amount of years. Yeah, just a bit rusty. That was all. I’ll make sure I work on it a little bit more for next time. But yeah, as long as I defended well into Turn 1 and kept the lead in Turn 1, I was quite confident I could go from there. So the pace was good enough in the first stint. Maybe didn’t look it at the very beginning, just because I was stuck behind a lot of cars. But having clean air, having fresher tyres as well, I could push and I was a little bit wary that Max normally is a bit slow off the mark and then all of a sudden clicks it into gear two and he’s gone. But not today. So in a good way, I could just stay focused, keep the car on track, not make any mistakes and the car felt great.
“But I said already on Friday, it felt good. I was confident on Friday and today that kind of feeling came back to me a lot. It was good. A lot of Sundays recently have been strong. Just today we managed to step it up and turn it into something even more. But I was pushing. I wanted to go for a fastest lap on the last lap. But I was imagining Andrea on the pit wall, like, ‘no, Lando, please’. So, yeah, he was talking to me, but I just thought then just to take it home and take it easy. But until then, you know, I wanted to pull away, and I didn’t want Max in the picture when I was over the line, and I don’t think he was. So that was job done. So happy with that.
“I had to push fairly hard just for a lap. And then I could kind of relax a little bit. I had fresher tyres, my pace was very good in clean air and Max was for the first time all race not in clean air, so I had the advantage and I could control things fairly well. I pushed for the first bit, my engineer was giving me updates on the gap and I felt like I was cruising and extending the gap and I didn’t feel like I had to do anything more. I don’t know, I’m shivering like hell, because I wanted to keep all my champagne on me and now I’m freaking cold. So yeah, I didn’t have to push too much for the first lap or two and then I could kind of cruise and be fairly comfortable.
“I was still pushing, because I wanted to open the gap, like I said. And, of course, your mind wanders a bit. My mind does. Maybe not everyone’s does. But, yeah, you know, walls get close sometimes, and you have those little moments where you think, ‘OK, don’t screw it up’. But I also was improving my laps and kind of getting quicker and quicker every lap, so I had a lap time to focus on. And, like, I wanted to go to kind of getting those fastest laps in. I don’t know if I did or not, but I had something to focus on and that took my mind away from thinking of the wrong things and therefore was all okay.”
Celebrations, looking at full glass moment –
Norris: “I don’t know what it’s full of… Probably like some hard liquor. It will be tonight. I’ve always enjoyed my moments of, you know, I have my times when I’m happy with what I’m able to go out and do. I’m just one of those guys that I’m not happy when I know I’ve not done the job I’m capable of doing. And today shows what I’m capable of doing. I think all year I’ve done a very good job. And I’ve worked hard and I’ve eliminated and got rid of a lot of my weaknesses. Yeah, like I’m still going to be that guy. I don’t think that’s going to change. I’m still going to be glass half full because for me, that’s what works for me. That’s my mindset. Everyone has their own way of doing things, their own approach, their own way that they talk to themselves and think of how can I approach today?
“How can I go out and do the best job? For me, it’s… talking down at myself and kind of putting myself down because for me that’s what works and I’m fine with that like I don’t need other people to be happy with it and for other people to agree with it. It’s what’s best for me and it’s what works best is what’s made me who I am and I think that’s uh my best way of going forward. So I’m going to have my days when the glass is full and I can be happy and I’m proud of myself. Everyone’s going to have those days and everyone should have those days. But in order to make myself the best man, the best driver, I have my way of doing things and I stick to that.”
Spoken to family –
Norris: “Yeah, I spoke to my mum and my dad already, which is always nice because they’re the ones… Normally my dad comes to the races, but not today, so I’m sure he’s regretting that just a little bit. But, yeah, I mean, my parents have been so supportive. You know, they’re the ones who are with you from the start. They allowed everything to happen. They’re the ones that got me into racing, supported me, and allowed me to get to Formula 1, reach my dream, and do what I’ve loved to do since I was a kid. And I’m very fortunate for everything that they’ve done and the position they’ve allowed me to be in.
“So you just have these flashbacks of every moment, you know, like… I just remember now being at a racetrack for the very first time in my life when I was five, six years old. My brother, my dad, and me just standing there and watching and just seeing the cars go by, to today, like being on top of the podium. So you think of those moments, and therefore, of course, I want to speak to my mum and dad, first of all, because you shared all those moments with them. And I just say a big thanks. And for my grandma, because she’s not been so well lately. I saw her last week, and I told her that I was going to win a race. I didn’t say when. I just said I was going to win a race. And I didn’t think it would be coming this soon. So I’m just very happy that I was able to do it as quickly as I did.”
Can win again with the updates –
Norris: “I mean, I said at the beginning of the year we could win races. A lot of people doubted what I could say and the fact that I said that. I think they doubted that McLaren could win races. They doubted that I could win races. But I was confident. Deep down I knew that we had our time coming. So the team have done an amazing job. We weren’t even into Q2 here last year. So now the fact we’re on top, we’ve won a race, the team have done an insane job to kind of go from where we were to where we are now. And we’ve chipped away, especially the last couple of months. There’s been a lot of hard work.
“And whenever you bring an upgrade, it’s not easy to kind of just go out and execute and just show that it’s better. But little things come together and when you have all these little bits coming together, it turns into a perfect day like it did today. So, of course, I have to say a big thanks to all of McLaren, everyone back in the factory, everyone that’s here, because I doubt… It would have been a lot less likely that I won today without these upgrades and without the hard work that they’ve been putting into everything. So, I would like to say it’s the start. And now I’m already hungry for more. But, yeah, we’ll keep our heads down. We’ll keep pushing and I’m sure we can be here a lot more often.”
First win as boss –
Stella: “For me, a victory as team principal is just like the victory of the team. My role is to serve the team and represent the team. So what you see now in one person, is 850 people. That’s where my thoughts, my heart and my mind goes because I know what type of work we are putting together, pulling off, to turn the situation around from 15 months ago, and the quality, because all teams will be pushing 100%. So it is a combination of the efforts, the quality and quantity, and this is the element I like the most, just the quality of the engineers, the technical people, the operators and mechanics and everyone. We call it total competition, it is such a huge, wide effort you have to put together and as a team principal, that’s what I have in front of me in this moment. You don’t go very far if you don’t lead the right people.”
Last few laps –
Stella: “The last laps, the main concern for me was a safety car because it would have been difficult to make a decision when you lead the race – do we stop or not for new rubber. You also don’t know how long the race will be after the restart, so that was the main reason for concern over the final laps. There were many battles so every time you saw an overtake, you were like ‘please don’t crash’. So they were the thoughts at the end of the race. But otherwise, we already had important clues early on, like when we saw Oscar overtaking a Ferrari, Max was opening a gap but wasn’t as fast as usual and when the cars ahead of Lando pitted and we saw what laptimes Lando was able to do, even without the safety car, we thought if we keep Lando out and build a good gap, then we would be fast at the end with a fresh set of tyres. The victory came with a little bit of help from the safety car, but I think we were in a strong position independently because the pace of the car was strong. We couldn’t necessarily see it in the other sessions but we had spells of very strong performance. But we were unsure whether the truth was very strong performance or disappointment, like we had in sprint qualifying three, for instance.”
Safety car situation, plans otherwise –
Stella: “When the safety car was deployed, I looked at the GPS and Lando was… Lando knew he would have needed to dive into the pit lane so if he didn’t, it is just because he was after pit entry. I haven’t checked. In fairness, he was so comfortable, he was calm, I don’t know if the radio was broadcast but he kept saying ‘guys, I am good, the tyres are good, stay calm, keep going’. So I think it would have been very interesting to see how long we could have gone, but there were no plans to pit as long as he was able to achieve green sectors and as long as his lap times were competitive with the people that had pitted on hards. Then you go as long as… actually, you start to lose some time because you have two benefits. One, you may find a safety car and the other is if you have 25-lap younger tyres, you are in condition to seriously attack the cars ahead even if overtaking is difficult.”
Weight off Norris –
Stella: “Realistically, I think it was a bit of a weight on his shoulders, but it was a weight on our shoulders as well because we knew as soon as we made winning material available to Lando, he would have delivered. So we felt the responsibility and I have said that many times, that it is up to us, it is not up to Lando. But credit to Lando, he kept developing. We had a talk in the media about how he developed over the winter, especially looking at improving in qualifying and delivering laps that sometimes don’t have to be 100% when you have a fast car, just be there. I think he is doing that. I also have to say that his race management is very mature. As soon as he saw there wasn’t much to do after the first lap, he started to save his tyres because he knew his race would come at some stage. The pace he was able to pull off when the cars ahead of him pitted, that was quite incredible. Fast in qualifying, even sometimes pacing himself, and then very mature in the race in terms of getting the most out of the material he has.”
Being in the position after 2023 Miami GP –
Stella: “I would like to be here and say ‘it was all under control, we had a plan’. It is true, we had a plan, I could see the development, especially in the aero department was very promising, the department was starting to be on fire and we could see we were starting to increase aerodynamic efficiency in the wind tunnel, in simulations. But first of all, we needed to see when we put it on track, would the data correlate? We knew we were very far in terms of how much downforce and efficiency we needed to add to the car. So there was a plan, there were some very encouraging and promising elements, but ultimately, there was a lot of belief.
“But the belief was well posed because, for me, as a leader of this group, I could see the talent is large at McLaren. I was going around the business, talking to people and was thinking ‘these guys know their job, they know the business, we just have to empower them’. Then I was collaborating with leaders that got completely into this kind of mindset. They didn’t want to have the properties, there are no territorial disputes at McLaren, it is all about collaborating, all about a collaborative approach to performance and giving space to people. That’s what was happening 12 months ago. But in terms of ‘will it work?’ it was more belief than a plan.”
Here’s post-race celebrations: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2024-miami-grand-prix-lando-norris-crosses-the-line-to-take-his-first-ever-f1-victory.1798250686431825298.html
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