Norris scoops maiden podium despite fears he'd "fudged it up"

Lando Norris pulled off an amazing smash-and-grab raid on the Austrian GP podium on Sunday, snatching third place from Lewis Hamilton in the final minutes of the 2020 season opener.

It means that the 20-year-old has started his second season in Formula 1 with his first ever podium place in the championship. It makes him the third youngest driver ever to stand on the F1 podium.

The triumph came out of the blue, after he and his McLaren team mate Carlos Sainz struggled for pace early in the race, and Norris lost positions to Hamilton and Alexander Albon.

But after the third safety car of the afternoon, Norris found himself in ideal position to pull off a banzai lap on Racing Point's Sergio Perez and punch in the fastest lap of the race/ Combined with a five second penalty for Hamilton, it catapulted him into third at the chequered flag.

• Bottas wins from Leclerc, Norris on the podium!

“I'm speechless I think,” he said when interviewed by Jenson Button after the race.

"There was a few points in the race where I thought I fudged it up quite a bit," he admitted. "I was up to fifth with a few laps to go and Carlos almost got past me.

"But I didn’t give up and I managed to get back past Perez and ended up on the podium!" he continued. “The last few laps, when I had to get past Checo I just knew he had a five second penalty but nothing more than that.

"I knew I had to get past him, and then there was the Lewis penalty came up so I had to turn it up and start pushing. But it's about rhythm here and I was locking up," he explained. “It was going downhill quite quickly but I recovered well - and I'm here, so I'm happy!”

"I always seemed to struggle when I was close to the cars ahead, I always seemed more vulnerable to cars behind," he admitted.

“So yeah, it was a long race but I kept going, kept trying to give it my all," he said. "A pretty cool last few laps having to push as much as I can, and you can tell I'm a bit out of breath!"

Last year Norris has to stand and watch from the sidelines as his team mate Carlos Sainz restored McLaren to the podium with third place in Brazil. But this time, the glory was all his.

"I'm so happy," he said. "I'm proud of the team, considering where we were a few years ago, to last year to now, I think it's a pretty good achievement so I am proud to be a part of it all."

His boss at McLaren, Andreas Seidl, admitted that he didn't think that Norris would be able to get the job done in time before the end of the race.

“To be honest I didn’t expect him to be able to pull off that lap at the end," Seidl told Sky Sports after the race.

"Obviously we had a strategy in mind, but such a young guy pulling off such a lap on the very last lap and up on the podium, it’s just great.”

Seidl wasn't sure whether Mercedes had simply been caught napping at the end by Norris' sudden spurt of speed.

"It’s difficult for me to say at the moment," he said. "We need to analyse what happened in detail. Maybe they didn’t think we had the potential to do this lap. But to be honest I don’t care!

"I’m just proud to be part of the team today," Seidl added. "There could be nothing better for the entire team, especially, after this difficult period, than such a result - especially with P3 and P5. It’s simply unbelievable.

Seidl added that the strong finish to today's race bode well for the rest of the 2020 season.

“The good thing was that we could see throughout the race - because we had some doubts on Friday - that we could actually go at the pace of the main competitors around us."

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