Lando Norris became the 21st British driver to win in Formula 1 after he took his maiden victory at the 2024 Miami Grand Prix.
Norris qualified in fifth on Saturday but took advantage of McLaren F1 Team’s new upgrades that they brought to Florida and a safety car during the race when Kevin Magnussen and Logan Sargeant came together. Norris’ pace was strong in the second half of the race though, as he built a gap of almost 10 seconds over current championship leader, Max Verstappen.
He holds the F1 record for the most amount of podiums without winning but he crossed the line at Miami to finally become a race winner, and the first Englishman since George Russell won at the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix.
When speaking to SkySportsF1 after the race, Norris said: “I don’t know what I’m feeling! I’m just happy, proud. It feels like it’s been a long time coming, I feel like we’ve had many opportunities. We’ve been getting closer and closer.
“As much as we had some setbacks – Friday Qualifying, the Sprint, not the best Qualifying on Saturday, I stayed positive. It all just came together. We were quick all day. I had a good strategy, a good plan. I stayed out of the way of trouble in Turn One because it was very close. I just focused on our race and we were quick.”
Norris was congrultated by almost the entire field after the race, including world champions Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, former teammate Daniel Ricciardo and fellow countryman George Russell.
“It’s incredible. That’s the best thing of all, the people you have respect for and the people you race against, when Fernando comes up to you and Lewis comes up to you, those are people I’ve looked up to since I was I kid.”
“The fact I’m racing against them and… they are probably not deep down happy for me, but they are happy for me and I respect that a lot and I’m thankful for that.”
