F1 Miami GP: How Piastri gained from a battle Norris couldn't win
On a hot day when McLaren’s race pace was always likely to tell, it’s easy to say Lando Norris should have simply sat back and picked off polesitter Max Verstappen’s Red Bull at his leisure. Easy, but wrong
“If you no longer go for a gap, you are no longer a racing driver.”
Ayrton Senna’s scolding words to Jackie Stewart, apropos Ayrton’s polarising first-corner swoop on Alain Prost in the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix that left both of them in the gravel, continue to resonate down the years. Often used as a condescending mic drop in online debate, it is a sentiment Lando Norris echoed when questioned whether, with hindsight, he would have tackled the first two corners of the 2025 Miami Grand Prix differently.
“There’s a gap. I’ve got to go for it. I’m not going to back out,” he said.
Norris’s problems began in qualifying, a phase of every weekend in which McLaren’s MCL39 continues to vex both its drivers. While undoubtedly the fastest car on the grid over a race distance, a fact underlined by McLaren annihilating its rivals in Miami, when pushed to the limits over a single lap it can bite – Norris especially has complained that its lack of feedback interrupts his “flow”.
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