Norris had been in third place at the restart on lap 35 after the race was red flagged after a clash between George Russell and Valtteri Bottas, who was behind front runner Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
After Verstappen nearly spun on the restart, it meant Leclerc couldn’t find any useful tow behind the Red Bull driver. Coupled with excessive spinning of the Ferrari on medium tires, Norris took advantage of the softs to pull alongside Leclerc and take second place.
Despite losing second place late to Lewis Hamilton, Norris secured the second podium of his F1 career in third place after maintaining the performance of his soft tires to the finish.
After the race, Norris admitted he wasn’t sure about using the softs to restart, but thanked his team for the decision as he stayed away from Leclerc in the closing stages.
“We made the decision to go on the softs and I wasn’t that confident about getting the tires working and it’s not an easy track to overtake but I think it was the right decision” said Norris.
“Aside from Max’s little moment, I thought Charles would drive ahead of Max when he restarted because he wasn’t on the track, but he didn’t take advantage of that. [After that] He had a lot of freaking out on restart when Max left and that’s the fault of the media and their decision.
“We made the decision to go on the softs and we’ve got off to a good start, a good restart, and we’re ahead of it.
“I started to save the tires from the first lap after the restart because I knew the last few laps would be tough and they were especially with Lewis in the end.
“It was a nice little battle and nice to drive unusual cars for us – Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari – so it’s nice to be up against them. Hopefully we can have more of these in the future. “
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL35M crosses the finish line
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
A podium crowned a busy Imola weekend for Norris, who was denied his best F1 qualifying result to date in third place when his best lap was erased in the third quarter after breaking track restrictions at Turn 9, and the McLaren driver fell back to seventh place.
Aside from the third-quarter mistake, which Norris wanted to take full blame for, the 21-year-old enjoyed his race weekend as he advanced to third place in the early F1 World Championship.
“Overall, I’m happy for both the team and myself. It’s been a pretty perfect weekend aside from the third quarter,” he said.
“We improved the car a lot in the last few days from Friday to Saturday in the sessions and we didn’t start on the best footing, but we improved a lot.
“I had the feeling that I did a very good job in qualifying and that I gave myself the opportunity to get pretty close to pole position in the third quarter. Effectively P3, then P7, so it was almost perfect on my part and the team, so I was disappointed. Coming back to third place today after a pretty eventful race was worth it for me, but above all for the team. “
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