Lando Norris says he made up his mind in Brazil to pay back McLaren Formula 1 team mate Oscar Piastri for his help by handing him a sprint win should circumstances arise.
Race leader Norris moved over coming out of the final corner of Saturday’s sprint in Qatar and gave the win to the Australian, while successfully keeping George Russell in third.
Piastri had let Norris past at Interlagos when the latter was still in the hunt for the World Championship.
However with Max Verstappen confirmed as champion in Las Vegas Norris was able to sacrifice a victory and a point in Qatar without worrying too much.
“I made my mind up in Brazil when it happened,” he said. “So it’s a sprint, I only care so much more about the Grands Prix, as does everyone. After that happened in Brazil, I made my mind up that I needed to do something to give it back.”
Norris said that the wider McLaren team wasn’t aware of what he planned to do.
“No, it wasn’t something that was really discussed,” he said. “I didn’t have to do it, if I didn’t want to. I told my engineer that I would do it. So he was the main one that probably knew about it, and I told him before the race, if we have a bit of a gap and we’re first and second, then I would try and do it.
“So he knew, and he was telling me not to do it, because I think the gap was to George was probably a bit too fine for their liking. But Oscar did his part in trying to help me win and win, or help me get closer to Max in the championship, and give that opportunity a go.
“I deserve that right to have a chance, and that’s how we have to work as a team when one of us has that opportunity, and I returned the favour today.
“I don’t think any of us are proud of necessarily winning a sprint race, or we’re also not too unhappy on giving up a sprint race win, but we work together well as a team, and I think that’s probably one of our biggest strengths.
“So for everyone is how well we work together. I don’t think any other team would do such a thing and help each other as much as we’ve done this year for one another. And yeah, it’s our strength, and we’ll continue to do that.”
Norris tried to help Piastri pass Russell at the start of the race, and later he let Piastri have DRS in order to stay clear of the Mercedes driver.
“Having clean air is a beautiful thing,” he said. “So I could control things quite a lot, and I did as much as I could to help Oscar. I knew George was going to be quick this race. I tried, in Turn 1 already, to stay quite tight. I knew George was on the inside. So instead of running wide and giving Oscar the dirty air I tried to stay tight and give George the dirty air. So that seemed to work.
“And then we got a one-two from there, which was lovely. I think I could build a gap, probably not a big gap, but I could slowly make some progress. But George was still very fast in the middle part of the race and towards the end.
“So I backed off a few times to try and get Oscar the DRS again, because our target was to finish one-two today, and that’s exactly what we did.”
