Patched-up Lando Norris has high hopes of ending wait for first grand prix win

Lando Norris is sporting a small plaster on the bridge of his nose here in Miami, the legacy of a boat-related “incident” in Amsterdam last week.“I wish it was a cooler story, but sadly it isn’t,” Norris told reporters when asked what exactly had happened at the party hosted by his Dutch DJ friend Martin Garrix.

Images, which appeared on social media in the immediate aftermath, of Norris’s face, wrapped in bandages and looking like Frankenstein’s monster, had made it appear as if the McLaren driver had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson.

The truth, Norris insisted, was far more mundane. He went to clink glasses with a friend, chipped the rim of his glass and then cut his nose as he drank from it. Norris says he did not even notice he had cut himself until friends pointed out he was bleeding and tried to patch him up.He refused to be embarrassed.

“It was just a good day with my friends,” he reflected. “Wherever I am in the world, if I can spend a few days with my friends I’m going to enjoy it.“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, people made a bigger deal out of it than it was. It was just a little cut. You can’t hide in the world today. Not that I’m trying to hide.”

The bigger question is whether Norris is going to slice through the field in Miami this weekend. The 24-year-old has famously not yet won a race in more than 100 starts. But he is getting closer.

McLaren have consistently been the third-quickest team this season after Red Bull and Ferrari, and Norris has been driving out of his skin recently. He took pole in the sprint in China last time out, before finishing second to Max Verstappen in the main race, an outstanding drive that saw him win the fan vote as driver of the day.

On Friday in Miami, it looked once again as if he might take sprint pole, going fastest in SQ1 and SQ2 only to overheat his tyres in SQ3 and tumble to ninth.

“Yeah, good, eh?” Norris told his race engineer over the radio afterwards, his voice laced with sarcasm. “I don’t need to say it. We all know what it was. But good job, the car was good, I’ll get it back tomorrow.”

Norris’ optimism despite the result was striking. Perhaps that has to do with the significant upgrade package at his disposal this weekend, which includes a new front wing, new front suspension geometry, a revised front-brake duct and winglet, a completely revised floor and new bodywork and engine cover. Whatever it was, he sounds very bullish about his chances on Sunday.

“I’m expecting a decent race,” he admitted. “If you look at last year, obviously we were pretty poor here. But when you look at this year we have performed well at pretty much every circuit and we’ve generally been the third-quickest team. So that’s where we should be. We’ll be disappointed if we’re any lower and pleasantly surprised if we’re any higher.”

If he breaks his duck on Sunday - and it probably still requires a Verstappen DNF for that to happen - those boat parties in the Florida Keys could take a hammering. It is not merely on-track that McLaren are beginning to take the fight to Red Bull, incidentally.

Off it, chief executive Zak Brown has not been afraid to throw a few punches. The American was at it again in Friday’s team principals press conference, predicting waspishly that chief technical officer Adrian Newey would “not be the last” to leave Red Bull “given the resumes flying around” at the moment. Brown’s barb drew a pointed response from Red Bull who pointed out that many of their technical team had recently renewed.

“We don’t foresee any significant loss and certainly not the domino effect Zak is hoping for,” said a spokesperson. Newey, meanwhile, gave a brief interview to Sky Sports in which he said he was “flattered” by Lewis Hamilton’s comments saying he would love Newey to join him at Ferrari next year, once his Red Bull contract ends.

“It’s too early, honestly,” Newey added of any such decision. “It’s very kind of Lewis to say that, I’m very flattered.“ But at the moment it’s just ‘take a little bit of a break and see what happens next’.”

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