the 2025 são paulo sprint: slip 'n' slides, LICO and lawson being lawson
norris wins a damp sprint, piastri bins it on a puddle his own teammate put there, and lawson collects yet another penalty.
são paulo is easily one of the best circuits F1 still races at. it almost always rains, which means plenty of crashes and spins, and it almost always ends up mattering for the championship (see 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2024).
last year max verstappen qualified P12, dropped to P17 with an engine penalty, and watched lando norris, his “championship rival” at the time, take pole. free points for norris (or so we thought). the dutch lion won in an arguably slower car, norris finished a lowly P6, and that was the end of his title hopes.
this year brazil was one of the six sprint weekends, so even more opportunity for wet chaos. norris took sprint pole ahead of kimi antonelli and oscar piastri, with my GOAT fernando alonso P5 and verstappen P6.
the track was only damp in patches, so everyone started on slick mediums or softs. (probably for the best, since pirelli can’t make a proper wet tire to save their lives.) norris kept the lead with kimi right behind him, and verstappen passed alonso for P5. further back, liam lawson tagged ollie bearman at turn 4 and spun him around.
on lap 6, norris ran wide over the kerb at turn 3 and dragged a puddle onto the track, like dropping a banana in mario kart. seconds later piastri touched the same wet kerb and spun into the barrier. nico hulkenberg and franco colapinto then did exactly the same thing. three cars in the wall at one corner, and a red flag that neutralized kimi’s chase.
piastri and colapinto were out. hulkenberg made it back to the pits, and sauber fitted new wings in time for the restart 25 minutes later. norris led away again, with kimi all over him to the flag.
alonso, now P5, had a DRS train of charles leclerc, lewis hamilton, lance stroll and pierre gasly behind him. then he was randomly told to perform LICO. (maybe aston martin borrowed some ferrari upgrades over the break.) he still kept leclerc behind until the closing laps before dropping to P6, and gasly passed a slow stroll for P8, the final point.
as for lawson, the stewards gave him five seconds and a penalty point (bearman got five too, for squeezing him on the straight). lawson has done well this season, but he keeps getting involved in incidents that are inarguably his fault, this one included.
on the final lap, home hero gabriel bortoleto lost the car braking for turn 1 while chasing alex albon. he hit the wall on the left, slid into the barriers on the right, narrowly missed albon and walked away unharmed. albon dragged a chunk of the sauber’s front wing under his car and dropped to the back.
the sprint finished under double yellows. norris won by 0.8 seconds from kimi, with george russell P3. max, leclerc, alonso, hamilton and gasly took the remaining points.
norris’ championship lead is now nine points thanks to oscar’s DNF, and oscar is only 30 ahead of verstappen. brazil didn’t deliver much weather, but it delivered chaos anyway. the forecast for the grand prix doesn’t show much rain, so the mclarens will probably dominate. the race is at 20:00 here in riyadh, so see you for the race summary.