Sainz Applauds Norris's Fortuitous Miami Win

Carlos Sainz expresses satisfaction as former teammate Lando Norris capitalizes on unexpected luck to secure a victory in Miami.

Carlos Sainz is glad that fortune finally favored Lando Norris, his former teammate at McLaren F1. The British driver benefited from a safety car deployment while having delayed his pit stop, which catapulted him into the lead. Sainz, who has three Grand Prix wins to his name, notes that dominating a race is not always necessary to win.

“The thing about Formula 1 is that there are weekends when everything is perfect,” Sainz stated. “You drive to the maximum, you are probably the strongest driver of the weekend because you maximize everything you have, and you finish P5, P4, P3, or P2 and you don’t make the headlines because you haven’t won the race.”

“There are other weekends where you might not do your best work, but in F1, there is just this luck factor that Lando had here, which allowed him to win a race. But he has been driving like a race winner for many races now, and he deserves this win.”

“Whether it’s luck or not doesn’t matter. He’s a race winner and it was time for this to happen for him and people need to accept this victory. When you don’t have the best car, sometimes a bit of luck is involved.”

Sainz laments a pit stop timing that disadvantaged him, and he even thinks that if he had similar timing to Norris, he could have won. While this claim is debatable considering the pace of the winner, Sainz believes that Oscar Piastri spoiled his end of the race.

“I conserved my tires, prolonged my stint, and we missed the safety car by one lap, which probably would have meant another victory. So, I felt a bit more frustration, especially towards Oscar who forced me off the track and made contact with me.”

“Then I realized it was time to be aggressive because everyone else was, and if I needed to get close to Oscar, you could see we were struggling on the straights. I did catch up at a good pace towards the end, catching up to the guys in front, catching up to Charles [Leclerc], but it was too late.”