Lando Norris said that proving his critics who bandied the ‘Nowins’ tag around wrong with his maiden Formula 1 win in Miami put “an even bigger smile on my face”.
Norris was running sixth in the opening laps but inherited the lead when those ahead pitted and he remained on track circulating at a competitive pace on worn tyres.
The Briton received the fortuitous break he needed when the Safety Car intervened and enabled him to make a pit stop at a reduced time loss and emerge still in first.
Despite having Max Verstappen on his tail upon the restart, Norris resisted the Dutchman’s threat into Turn 1 and accelerated clear to triumph with a 7.6-second gap.
Norris, who is now victorious in F1 at the 110th attempt, expressed that he never lost faith that he could succeed and admits the talk around his drought inspired him.
“I never didn’t believe in what I could go out and do,” Norris said. “So happy to put that to bed and prove a lot of these people wrong.
“Cause yeah, as much as I love to see it and I go on Instagram and I like all the comments of people abusing me I freaking love it. It makes me smile more than anything.
“Especially ‘Lando Nowins’, that’s become the thing.
“For me to finally prove those people wrong and prove the people that didn’t think I could go out and do it, it’s got an even bigger smile on my face, so I thank all of them.”
Norris asserted that those who continued to doubt his capabilities did not impact him, but he was desperate to earn his breakthrough F1 win to alleviate such doubts.
“I mean you’re always going to have people that don’t support you and people that do,” he added.
“When you’re out there on the podium and I do my in-lap there’s a lot of people out there cheering you on and waving and congratulating so I thank all of them.
“Of course, the people I keep closest to me, my team, my engineers, my manager, my trainer, my family, those are the people whose words you always take as something more meaningful and anyone can say what they want. I’m always for that.
“People don’t need to like me. I’m not always asking for those types of things.
“But when people doubt me in certain situations and want to prove them wrong… they think they know what they’re talking about and when you prove that they don’t then that’s a nice thing to go out and do so. Yeah, not like a dig at anyone. I wanted to say like the Valtteri [Bottas] to ‘whom it may concern’ [from 2019], but I was like, that’s copyrighted.
“So I didn’t want to repeat it. But yeah, like it’s just nice to just go out there and do my job and show people what I’m capable of doing.”
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