Lando Norris achieved his first Formula 1 win in Miami and underlined how this proves many doubters wrong. He also praised McLaren for the great work done so far.
The British driver came close to winning in 2021, where, in Sochi, he lost the victory just a few laps from the checkered flag. In Miami, he exploited the safety car period to take the lead, and then he also managed to create a gap of almost 8 seconds to Max Verstappen.
His win didn’t come just thanks to luck, but also from the raw pace that McLaren was able to unlock thanks to new upgrades.
“About time – what a race,” Norris said. “It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally managed to do it, so I’m so happy for my whole team.
“I finally delivered for them. I’m finally on top so, I’m over the moon.
“A lot of people I guess doubted me along the way. I’ve made small mistakes over my last five years, my short career, but today we put it all together.
“So this is all for the team. I stuck with McLaren because I could believe in them and I did believe in them, and today proved exactly that.”
Norris thought that he could fight for something more already on Friday, as he felt the pace was good. Then, with a perfect strategy, the team managed to put everything together and the result was a great win.
“The whole weekend has been good. I’ve just had some little setbacks along the way,” he said.
“I knew on Friday we had the pace and just [made] a couple of mistakes here and there. But today, we managed to put it together.
“We had the perfect strategy, it all paid off so thanks to McLaren, [to] everyone, and I have to give a shout-out to my mum and dad, of course.”