Lando Norris cashes in on Oscar Piastri’s crash to extend championship lead
Lando Norris’ world championship hopes were handed a major boost after he won Saturday’s sprint race in Sao Paulo and Oscar Piastri crashed out.
Norris started from pole position and navigated his way through the chaos to lead every lap and take the chequered flag just eighth tenths clear of Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.
George Russell finished third, one place ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. Norris’ win allows him to extend his title lead over Piastri from one point to nine. Verstappen is now 40 points adrift of Norris with 108 points on the table.
Drama in #F1Sprint as Piastri crashes out! 😮#F1 #BrazilGP pic.twitter.com/rRbfLf6SLQ
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 8, 2025
Pole-sitter Norris delivered a strong start to lead into the opening corner with Antonelli second and Piastri, who started third, unable to muscle his way ahead of the Mercedes teenager.
Norris was in control of the action before Piastri dramatically hit the barriers at the start of the sixth lap.
Piastri dipped his front-left tyre on to the kerb on the exit of the Senna Esses which sent him into a spin and an unavoidable date with the wall.
The golden rules to tackling a damp track – following an overnight storm in Sao Paulo – are to avoid white lines and taking too much kerb and Piastri failed to adhere to the latter.
Mega drive, Lando 🤩💪#McLaren | #BrazilGP 🇧🇷 pic.twitter.com/Peaf0UCkqH
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) November 8, 2025
So too did Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg and the Alpine of Franco Colapinto and carbon-copy crashes followed. The abused tyre barrier on the exit of turn three required repairs and the race was red-flagged.
“I will try to put this behind [me],” Piastri told Sky Sports. “There’s a lot more points on offer tomorrow, so the better job I can do in qualifying to get a good starting spot, the better it will be.”
Piastri had held a 34-point lead at the summit of the standings following his win in the Netherlands on the final day of August.
But the Australian’s campaign has unravelled since and his latest error comes after he crashed in qualifying in Azerbaijan in September and then on the first lap of the race in Baku, before he caused a pile-up in last month’s sprint race in Austin which led to both him and team-mate Norris failing to finish.
Back to Interlagos and a 24-minute delay followed the suspension before a rolling start allowed Norris to avoid the perils of a standing start. Norris saw off Antonelli’s interest before going on to win.
“It was tough,” said Norris. “It makes the win look rewarding when you have a race like this. Kimi did not make my life easy. It was sketchy. It was not an easy race but the sort of race you would expect here in Brazil.”
Verstappen, up two places from sixth on the grid following Piastri’s retirement and a first-lap move on Fernando Alonso, went wheel-to-wheel with the Aston Martin man through the opening four corners of the restart but managed to keep the 44-year-old behind. His four points lost to Norris casts him further adrift.
Lewis Hamilton started only 11th and took three drivers prior to the first corner to settle into eighth and then improved one position following Piastri’s demise to take seventh.
Hamilton’s Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc finished fifth after he fought his way ahead of Alonso in the closing stages.
Home favourite Gabriel Bortoleto was able to walk away from a horror smash at the beginning of the last lap when he caught a damp part of the asphalt which spiralled him into the nearside barrier.
The force of the 180mph impact sent him momentarily into the air and thudding into the wall on the opposite side of the circuit. Bortoleto left his Sauber wreckage and was scooped up by the medical car but it is highly unlikely he will participate in qualifying which starts at 1500 local time (1800 GMT).
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