Lando Norris was gathering his golf clubs as well as his senses on Monday morning after the biggest afternoon of his life, en route to Augusta National.
The 24-year-old always planned to start his week at the home of the Masters, but he delayed the 600-mile trip from Miami by a day – or more specifically a night – after winning his first grand prix in Florida on Sunday.
Suddenly the most talked about driver on the grid, he was under instruction from McLaren chief executive, Zak Brown, to stay and enjoy himself on site.
Brown, whose friends are Augusta members, is more than Norris’s boss. He has nurtured his talent from a young age – ‘since he was 2ft 2in and weighed 40K’ as world karting champion a decade ago – and it was with an air of almost paternal pride that the 52-year-old American greeted his protégé’s triumph at the Hard Rock Stadium.
Sounding a little hoarse but declaring himself in good form when he rang Mail Sport, Brown reported that the night’s celebrations had been ‘young and screaming’. He got out relatively early from the party staged at a reception room in the team hotel. Music blared while a sports channel replayed the race.
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Lando Norris finally became a Formula One race winner at the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday
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The McLaren star ended his 110-race wait to take the first victory of his Formula One career
Donald Trump meets Lando Norris ahead of his Miami Grand Prix win
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The function wound down at 2am, leaving Lando and his hardcore contemporaries to pursue their nocturnal revelries elsewhere.
Norris’s win owed something to luck, yes – the timely intervention of the safety car – but it was always going to take a break of one sort or another to eclipse Max Verstappen, his closest pal on the grid and the supreme weaponiser of an already deadly Red Bull.
But once gifted the lead by virtue of a free pit stop, Norris withstood Verstappen’s intimidatory stalking at the re-start and proceeded to open up a lead coolly and incrementally to end a winless streak stretching across 110 races.
Only once had he really chucked away a potential win, in Russia two years ago, when he obstinately remained on dry tyres as the rain intensified. A lot more introspective than his impish demeanour might suggest, he was inconsolable at the loss. The team needed to pick him up.
