Lando Norris did not let a cut nose dampen his celebrations after winning his first British Grand Prix.
Norris might end up with a second scar on his nose, to match one caused by a glass cut last year, after a photographer fell off the pit-wall barriers and knocked the McLaren driver’s winner’s trophy into his face as he was trying to celebrate his Silverstone victory with the fans.
But a little while later he was up on the fan stage, two strips of medical tape on his injury, with team-mate Oscar Piastri and McLaren chief executive officer Zak Brown.
Norris did three ‘shoeys’, the celebration where a winner drinks champagne out of his shoe brought to Formula 1 from Australian sport by his former team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, and Piastri and Brown followed suit.
It was the least he – and they – deserved after a demanding, incident-packed, intensely difficult race in constantly changing conditions between wet and dry, which Piastri would have won but for a controversial penalty for what was adjudged a safety-car infringement.
Piastri will be stewing over that one for a while, but while Norris inherited the win, there was little to choose between them all weekend. And the Briton was pressing Piastri hard at the time the Australian pitted for tyres for the final time and served the penalty.
Both had driven exceptional races, in a different class to the rest of the field, in a car that looked as impressive as it has done all season.
“Eventful race,” Norris, 25, said. “It means a huge amount. Being on top in your home race is very, very special.”
Norris started watching F1, he said, when Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were driving silver McLarens at Silverstone in 2007. He recalled that, as well as Hamilton’s brilliant victory in the wet in 2008.
And now, with Hamilton and Alonso still in the field, Norris had taken his own win in a silver – well, partially, anyway, at least for this weekend – McLaren.
“Lewis won, and I got that picture of him going around and seeing all the fans standing up, and that picture of what an atmosphere in Silverstone is like, and dreamed of that for many, many years,” Norris said.
“Today I got to live that feeling myself and see it through my own eyes. So, pretty amazing, pretty special.
A lot of people, from my friends and family, my brother, my sisters, my mum, my dad, my dad’s parents, every person that I could have here is here.
“So, yeah, more special than ever, 100%. And a tough race to do it in as well.”
Lando Norris celebrates the win with his family at Silverstone
The win reduced his deficit to Piastri in the championship to eight points, and it was the first time he has won two grands prix in a row. But he was wary of talking about the meaning of it beyond itself.
“You can always class it as momentum or whatever,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s whatever you want to believe in the end of the day. I think it’s still just one race at a time.
“I give my credit to Oscar at the same time because he drove an extremely good race.
“It’s two wins, but they’ve not come easy by any means. We’ve had good fights, but they’re pretty strenuous, exhausting weekends because you’re fighting for hundredths and thousandths [of a second], and you’re fighting for perfection every session and I’m against some pretty good drivers. So, it takes a lot out of you, especially when you have a race like today.
“I’ve had two good weekends and, of course, I would love to continue that momentum, but it still requires more consistency. Two weekends doesn’t mean anything otherwise. And I just need to keep it up and keep working hard.”
Piastri penalty ‘very harsh’
Oscar Piastri was given a 10-second penalty for erratic driving immediately before a restart
