“If I was going to have one opportunity, it was going to be there and then.” Lando Norris hadn’t exactly raced out of the blocks on the Brazilian Grand Prix’s second standing start, but he had gathered momentum after waving away a sniff of an attack from Lewis Hamilton as he gave chase to inevitable race leader Max Verstappen. It produced a showdown that was as fleeting as it was intense.
During the infant laps of the 71-tour race at the famed Interlagos circuit, a venue that has hosted more than its fair share of iconic F1 moments, Norris intended to fight Verstappen. The Red Bull driver was not given the opportunity to perform his usual trick of running off into the distance, at least, not until much later, as Norris’s McLaren stuck to his tail through the opening laps and then began to pile on the pressure.
It was at the end of the seventh lap that Norris closed the arrears down to less than half a second, setting up a pair of assaults on Verstappen on lap eight that he hoped would reward him with the lead. The first was precipitated by Norris’s run on the start/finish straight; Verstappen found the papaya-tinged MCL60 barrelling toward him in his mirrors at a vast rate of knots, prompting him to make a subtle manoeuvre towards the left and collect the inside line into the downhill Senna S. This forced Norris to the outside and left one more chance for him – this time, at Turn 4 – to come up for air with the lead.
Norris stayed close to Verstappen, but
