Carlos Sainz believes Lando Norris has driven “like a race winner for many years” and “deserved” the luck that helped him to succeed in Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix.
Norris hadn’t won a race in his previous 109 races in F1 but ended the drought on Sunday in Miami as he capitalised on a mid-race Safety Car to beat Max Verstappen.
But while Sainz admits that his ex-McLaren team-mate got fortunate that he could pit at a reduced time loss, he cites how drivers not in the best car rely upon breaks.
Sainz, who stands with Norris as the sole drivers to have pipped Red Bull since the start of last season, thinks that F1 is unique in that good outings can go unnoticed.
“The problem with Formula 1 is that there’s weekends where you do everything perfect,” Sainz said. “You drive to the maximum, you probably are the strongest driver of the weekend because you maximise everything you have and you finish P5, P4, P3 or P2 and you’re not in the headlines because you haven’t won a race.
“And there’s other weekends that maybe you don’t do your best job but in F1 there’s just this luck factor that Lando got today and won a race.
“But he’s been driving like a race winner for many, many races in a row now and he just deserves that win. Luck, no luck, it doesn’t matter.
“He’s a race winner and it was about time that it was coming for him and people just have to accept that win. When you don’t have the best car, sometimes it’s a bit of luck.”
Sainz rued pitting one lap prior to the Safety Car’s intervention as he ran ahead of Norris in the first stint and would have been in the optimal position to inherit the lead.
The Spaniard instead took the chequered flag in fourth, but he was penalised post-race for contact with Oscar Piastri and a five-second time drop demoted him to fifth.
“I saved my tyres, extended and we missed the Safety Car by one lap, which would have meant another win probably,” he bemoaned.
“This meant another bit of frustration and the frustration with Oscar for running me wide off the track and having contact there.
“And then I realized it was time to be aggressive because everyone was being aggressive today and if I needed to get a move on Oscar, you could see that we were struggling on the straights. I needed to send one down the inside. I did it on a good pace towards the end, catching the guys in front, catching Charles [Leclerc], but it was too late.”
