F1 Focus: Norris masters Miami to finally claim maiden victory

I wasn't exactly counting down the days until the Miami Grand Prix given Max Verstappen's continued dominance and the fact that the Florida circuit has been one of the worst on the grid since joining the calendar in 2022.

While the track again failed to impress though, a well-timed Safety Car did at least give us a new winner in the form of Lando Norris, and the McLaren man is of course the focus of this week's column.

Lando finally becomes the leading man

Lando, much like his namesake in the Star Wars franchise, has always been a supporting character at the front of the F1 field, occasionally stepping into the spotlight but more often than not playing second fiddle to the likes of Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. At the weekend though, he finally became the leading man.

It wasn't just that he finally won a race, but how he won it too. Granted, a stroke of good fortune put him at the head of the pack, but he still had a huge amount to do and did with it ease, not only holding off Verstappen for the rest of the race but pulling away from the Dutchman with ease. The McLaren driver was, on average, 0.3 seconds faster than the reigning champion.

A criticism of Norris in the past has been that he's let the pressure get to him when he's been in with a chance of tasting victory, but there was no sign of that this time around with the Brit looking like a man that was used to winning F1 races rather than one that was about to win his first. There were no errors, no stressed messages over the team radio and no doubts that he was finally going to stand on the top step of the podium.

It's always been clear that he's talented enough to hold his own against anyone - I wrote in my last column that I'd back him to beat anyone except Verstappen, Hamilton or Fernando Alonso in even machinery - but he's now shown that he has the mental strength to do so too, and that feels like a big moment.

The long wait for a first win has weighed heavily on him in the last few years, and with that weight now at long last off his shoulders, we could be about to see him firmly establish himself as one of the sport's very best.

Can McLaren make things interesting?

Ferrari have done a decent job of taking the fight to Verstappen and Red Bull at times this season, but the reigning champions faced a bigger threat in Miami than they have in a long time, and it came from McLaren.

The British team expected good things from the upgrades they brought to Florida but even they would have been surprised by just how quick they were, with the MCL38 being the fastest car on the grid for the majority of the weekend.

Norris topped the timesheets in the first two qualifying sessions for the sprint race and it quickly emerged in the main race that he and Oscar Piastri were the two fastest men in the field. The Aussie made a lightning start to move up to second and then stay within touching distance of Verstappen, while his teammate bounced back from a poor opening lap by overtaking the Red Bull of Sergio Perez before hunting down the Ferraris and then leaving everyone in his dust after the Safety Car period.

So strong was their race pace that if the team hadn't struggled to get the best out of their car on the softest compound tyre in qualifying for the main event, limiting them to starting positions of fifth and sixth, we could well have seen the two finish first and second on Sunday, a decent way ahead of the rest.

It's too soon to say whether McLaren can enjoy such an advantage over Red Bull again and ignite a title fight or whether this was just a one-off. However, the champions now having four strong drivers in strong cars to deal with rather than just two can only be a good thing for us spectators.

F1 and the FIA fail to practice what they preach

If there was one downside to what was an otherwise dream weekend for McLaren and Norris, it was probably the uncomfortable position they were put in by the sport off the track.

After Donald Trump was seen touring the McLaren garage before the race, the team quickly clarified that he wasn't at the event as their guest and that they'd been asked by F1 and the FIA to show him around. However, they have since received a huge amount of criticism for it nonetheless, as has Norris after being seen speaking and shaking hands with the former American president following his victory.

All of that criticism should, in my eyes, be directed towards the sport and the governing body instead. They unfairly put a team and a young driver in a situation that they knew would be hugely volatile and completely contradicted themselves in the process after calling for politics to be kept out of the sport in the last few years.

That's been their go-to response when Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have spoken out against racism and homophobia respectively and when questions have been asked about the human rights record of Saudi Arabia following the addition of a race there to the calendar. And yet they were all too happy to welcome probably the biggest and most controversial political figure in the world to the race in Miami, even allowing him to wear a baseball hat brandishing his campaign slogan for the election he'll be standing in later this year.

It's hardly a good look for them, asking drivers not to stand up for what they believe in to avoid politics being brought to the grid and then using politics to try to gain a few more fans in the US - it's difficult to think of any other reason for them embracing Trump's presence the way they did. It may be tradition for a host country's Head of State to attend the race, but he isn't America's Head of State anymore whether he wants to admit it or not.

Worst of all though, they've caused a 24-year-old to receive a huge amount of abuse online on what should have been one of the best days of his life. Whether that bothers him or not, it's not something he should be having to put up with.