How Norris called for position swap with Piastri “now” to win sprint race · RaceFans

Lando Norris won the Interlagos sprint race thanks to his team making way for him with two laps to go.

Oscar Piastri led all the way from pole position until lap 22, when McLaren called for the pair to swap places.

The exchange of positions was widely expected as Norris is the closest threat to championship leader Max Verstappen. But with Charles Leclerc and Verstappen stalking their cars early in the race, McLaren kept their drivers running first and second at the head of the field until they judged the time was right to swap their cars.

Eventually Verstappen passed Leclerc and closed on Norris. When Nico Hulkenberg stopped on track with a technical problem, McLaren responded by swapping their drivers around, at Norris’ urging.

“Ideally you would do it earlier,” team principal Andrea Stella admitted after the race, “but the situation never materialised for this being done in a safe situation, because as soon as you swap, you would have the guy in third that has a possibility to overtake McLaren, and this wouldn’t fit our principle that the team result comes first.”

At one stage Norris expressed concern that the team did not swap the position earlier on. But Stella said they were being careful not to jeopardise the maximum score for the team.

“We were monitoring the gaps to Leclerc before, and [then] Verstappen to see if we could have executed an easy overtake between Lando and an Oscar before the end,” Stella told Sky. “But actually that gap never materialised.

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“So we needed to watch for a case of a Safety Car or Virtual Safety Car. It actually appeared due to the incident with the car stopping on track. So we immediately executed.”

He praised the drivers and their race engineers for their communication. “It was well done by the team, but it would not be possible without both drivers working so cohesively.

“We are definitely very happy with the conversations that are happening right now and with the support that Oscar has given to Lando.”

McLaren’s radio messages from the Interlagos sprint race

Oscar Piastri and Tom Stallard