Norris spares Mclaren’s blushes in midfield battle

Ferrari descends into omnishambles

Fifth was among the most hotly disputed positions in the field throughout the race and Lando Norris seized it with panache in a late charge. His Mclaren team-mate Carlos Sainz ought to have finished there, but a delay tightening the left-rear wheelnut at his pitstop meant Sainz lost track position and emerged in traffic.

At the time of his stop, Sainz led a train of cars,

all of which were then in with a shot at fifth. Esteban Ocon dropped out early with a radiator problem identical to that which eliminated teammate Daniel Ricciardo the previous week, leaving Ricciardo – starting from eighth on the medium tyre rather than the softs favoured by the rest of the top 10 – in fifth after Sainz’s troubled stop.

But the Renault was less happy on softs and Ricciardo’s pace slumped immediately after his stop on lap 37. That left him vulnerable to Racing Point’s Sergio Pérez, who had driven a stormer of a race to rise from 17th on the grid – while making his soft tyres last a lap longer than Ricciardo’s mediums.

Having dispatched Ricciardo, Pérez headed off in pursuit of Albon, only to understeer into the Red Bull while trying to pass at Turn 4 on lap 70, breaking his front wing. At the same time, Ricciardo was having to take evasive action to avoid Pérez’s team-mate Lance Stroll clattering into him while passing for sixth place at Turn 3.

After a three-place grid penalty for failing to observe a yellow flag in practice, Norris had endured a soul-sapping opening stint in what he called “a DRS train”, five places behind his teammate. With 11 laps to run they were eighth and ninth, Sainz struggling on tyres damaged by the effort of breaking out of the post-stop traffic, so Mclaren gave the order to swap places. Freed, Norris closed in on Stroll, passed Ricciardo during the contretemps on lap 70, nailed Stroll under DRS at Turn 4 next time around, then passed the struggling Pérez at the final corner.

If only the battle for the leading three places had been so thrilling…