Lando Norris left feeling grateful as Brazilian GP penalty frustrates Max Verstappen

Lando Norris gained another point on title rival in the stewards' room after yesterday's Sprint.

The Brit was gifted victory in the short-form race by who was ordered to move aside for his title-chasing team-mate. thought he had narrowed the gap to Verstappen, who finished third on the road, by two points. But he gained another one when late in the Sprint.

It took Verstappen a while to dispatch in the 24-lap dash but once he had done so, he felt he had the pace to overtake at least one of the . "But then unfortunately the VSC came out and that was race over," he lamented.

Norris said he was "not proud" of the way he had secured his first career Sprint race win. And he was full of gratitude to Piastri who had led from pole until there were three laps to go when the threat of a safety car prompted McLaren to order their Aussie racer to move aside.

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Now 44 points behind Verstappen heading into today's Grand Prix, the Brit said: "We worked well as a team together, so I thank Oscar. We have done a great job as a team. Today was the result that we wanted. Oscar deserved [the win] but we are doing what we have to do, so I thank him and the team. We had great pace."

Piastri claimed the switch was pre-agreed and so he was happy to comply in order to help his team-mate's title bid. He said: "We spoke about it before the race and when we were going to swap. The gap never really got big enough to do it at a convenient time, but that was always the plan at some stage. I think we pulled it off as well as we could, it got a bit close with Max under the VSC."

progressed from 13th on the grid to score one point, though still outscored them to solidify their grid on second place in the constructors' championship. had a much worse day, though, with sixth and unable to make his way up to the points having dropped to 14th on the first lap.

The seven-time F1 champion said his car felt "horrendous" to drive and added: "Honestly, it felt really terrible today, even worse than it did in qualifying. That was one of the worst races. I felt the car just sliding around and zero grip behind even the Williams [of Franco Colapinto]. I could barely keep up with them for a period of time."

Hamilton also said he wanted to "flip the car on its head" for qualifying in the hope of making his car more competitive. But Mercedes have already conceded that, as they are almost assured fourth place in the constructors', they will use the final few weeks of the season simply to gather data for their 2025 cars - which Hamilton will not be driving.

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: "It is certainly a good opportunity for us to do a bit more experimentation in the race weekends. There will be lots of opportunities to do set-up work, lots of opportunities to use the two cars to compare different approaches."