Read also:
- Man City make ominous statement on chastening night for Liverpool
- How the US overtook China as Africa’s biggest foreign investor
- US Supreme Court rules full Snap food benefits can be temporarily halted
- Thousands take to Lisbon streets over proposed labour laws
- Thousands of Chinese lured abroad and forced to be scammers – now Beijing is cracking down
Andrew Benson, F1 Correspondent
Lando Norris was asked after the Sao Paulo Grand Prix whether he was now thinking about the championship, having extended his lead in one weekend from one point to nearly a clear win.
“Not at all,” he said.
Even if that’s true, even if that’s what he’s trying to do, he can’t not be, deep down.
The Briton’s second victory in succession moves him 24 points clear of his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri. Max Verstappen – despite producing at Interlagos probably the drive of the season – is 49 adrift.
There is a maximum of 83 points available over the remaining three races. It is not won yet, but Norris is in total control of the championship heading to the next race in Las Vegas from 20-22 November.
Between Norris and Piastri, the season has flipped on its head in the space of just seven races spanning a little over two months.
Piastri left the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, the first race after F1’s summer break, with a 34-point lead, after his seventh victory of the season and Norris’ retirement.
The Australian looked an odds-on title favourite at that point. He had been solidity personified since the start of the year, and unquestionably the leading McLaren driver to that point of the season.
But Piastri’s season has simply fallen apart, and Norris has got better and better.
Over those seven grands prix, including two sprints, the swing in Norris’ favour has been a remarkable 58 points.
Piastri’s pace has disappeared – even if there were flashes over the weekend in Brazil that suggested it might be coming back – and Norris has shed the inconsistency and small errors that blighted his first part of the season, and begun to look very much like a champion in the making.
