Piastri: It was an example of great teamwork

Lando Norris led the short Saturday race from the start almost to the finish, but literally in the last meters of the distance he lost the victory to his partner, leaving Oscar Piastri to blame for the sprint in Sao Paulo. This maneuver was another shining example of McLaren’s well-coordinated teamwork.

Oscar Piastri (1st): “To be honest, I had to defend myself the entire race! I had a good start, of course I had a good turn 1, but I didn’t have enough pace. I think I destroyed my front tires early in the race, which made it difficult in the remaining laps.

But this was an example of excellent teamwork – without the help of a partner the difficulties over the sprint distance would have been much greater. It’s great that McLaren won the winning double!

The results are very tight, in yesterday’s qualifying the first five or six results fit into two or three tenths, so it’s better not to make mistakes, but we will still try to improve something on the car for the main qualifying of the weekend.”

Lando Norris (2nd): “We won a winning double – this is exactly the result we were aiming for today. It’s great that we achieved the maximum number of points.

The team has reason to be happy, we performed perfectly. The pace was good, although I probably could have gone a little faster, but we wanted to keep everyone behind us so we tried to avoid George Russell getting too close to Oscar. We have completed our task, and that is the most important thing.

I planned to let my partner go first after Brazil, although this may have happened a little closer to the finish of the sprint than I would have liked. It probably turned out to be a bit risky, but it seemed to me that this would be for the best. The team asked me not to do this, but I thought we could do it, and we still achieved our goal.

To be honest, I have nothing against it. I’m not here to win sprints – I’m here to win Grands Prix and championships. In that respect, not everything is going according to plan, but I have done everything in my power and am already starting to prepare for tomorrow.”