Lando Norris has cruised to victory at the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday to cut teammate Oscar Piastri’s Formula 1 standings lead.
Starting on pole position, Norris locked up a wheel into the first corner but still managed to hold off last year’s winner, Charles Leclerc of Ferrari.
“It feels amazing,” Norris said. “This is what I did dream of when I was a kid.”
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Norris took his first Grand Prix win since the season-opening Australian Grand Prix — though he did win a sprint race in Miami this month — and reduced Piastri’s lead from 13 points to three.
Leclerc was second after closing in on Norris late in the race — though he wasn’t able to attempt a pass — while Piastri was third and defending champion Max Verstappen fourth.
Piastri recovered from a tough lead-up for a seventh straight podium finish.
The Australian had a career-high number of brushes with the barriers on F1’s most famous street circuit before being relieved to finish third in qualifying.
He had also crashed during second practice on Friday and felt he’d clipped a wall in Q1 before a heftier tap with his left-rear tyre at La Rascasse in Q2.
“Obviously the win would have been better but it’s been a tricky weekend, practice was messy all the way through and I felt like I got into qualifying with not a lot of confidence,” Piastri said after the race.
“I got close but not quite close enough. Around here, where you qualify is pretty much where you’re going to finish so pretty happy with that overall. More points on the board, another trip to the podium in Monaco so it’s not all bad.
“The margins are so fine. If this is a bad weekend, it’s not going too badly at all. We’ll go again next week and try and come back stronger.”
Verstappen was the leader on track until the second-to-last lap but only because he had yet to make his mandatory second pit stop under a rule change introduced in an attempt to spice up the Monaco Grand Prix, where overtaking is almost impossible.
Despite predictions it could allow some teams and drivers to spring a surprise, the rule had little overall impact on the results, except for a few cases of teams seemingly slowing down one car to benefit a teammate.
“We lost the race yesterday,” was Leclerc’s verdict, referring to the importance of qualifying on pole in Monaco, his home race.