After delivering a fifth podium in six races, Lando praised the consistency of the MCL60. The British star took the fight to Max Verstappen at the São Paulo Grand Prix on a circuit where the team hadn’t expected to be strong, one weekend on from his storm through the field on another circuit where the team had predicted we’d “struggle”.  

The 23-year-old highlighted Mexico’s Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez and Brazil’s Autódromo José Carlos Pace as two tracks he hadn’t expected to suit us, and said that the MCL60’s form at both bodes well for the final two races of 2023.  

“It doesn’t seem like there are any bad tracks for us at the minute,” he told F1TV. “Here and Mexico are the two tracks we said we were going to struggle, and we’ve come out of them a lot better than we were expecting, so I think it’s a big positive for the whole team and for myself to know this. 

“I have no clue on the next two tracks. We’ve performed better here than I was expecting, and better than the team was expecting. It is a positive for us that we are performing at tracks that shouldn’t be so good for us, but Vegas is a question mark for everyone. I am looking forward to it.”

Lando launched from sixth to second off the line before a Red Flag at Interlagos, and he then brushed off a challenge from Lewis Hamilton at the restart, matching the rapid Verstappen for pace.  

He remained within a second of the Red Bull when DRS was enabled and attempted a move at the first corner, momentarily edging ahead, but Verstappen clawed back the position and kept him at bay. Lando then eased off to save his tyres and consolidated P2 ahead of Fernando Alonso.  

“This has been a close-to-perfect weekend, close, not quite, but as close as it gets,” he continued. “I got a very good start.  

“To start and get into P2, I was like ‘ohhh we can have a tasty one here with Max’. I tried on my first opportunity, but I only had one, and I couldn’t make it count. It’s very positive to be up there, fighting in these positions, to have such a big gap to everyone behind us. 

“The performance has been there all weekend. In the [Sprint Shootout] yesterday, the [Sprint] yesterday, and the race today, we’ve done as good as we could have done, so I am very happy. We’ve scored a lot of points and two more podiums. There just wasn’t enough to win - Max is still just that little bit too far ahead for us.” 

Although he wasn’t able to challenge Verstappen any further, Lando looked comfortable in second and added another 26 points to his tally, taking his seventh podium of the year and extending his longest points’ scoring run in F1 to 12 races. He’s now fifth in the Drivers’ standings, with a three-point buffer over sixth, three points off fourth. 

Lando and Max are the only two drivers to have scored more than 100 points since the summer break, and when discussing their battle post-race, the runaway race-winner said that he enjoyed going wheel-to-wheel with Lando: “He gave it a good run.

“That lap where I had to defend, it was close, and he got by me, but I think also Lando realised I have to save my tyres to make sure we make it to the end of the stint in the best possible way. 

“I think for every stint for the first half of it, Lando was doing the same lap times as me, but it was always the last five to 10 laps where it seemed like we had a little bit more pace than McLaren today, and we could extend our gap a little bit all the time, so that was definitely positive for us today. 

“Yeah, but I’m not surprised. I know how good Lando is, and it’s nice to see him there. He deserves that as well, McLaren deserves that. Hopefully, we’ll have many more battles.” 

It was a difficult race for Oscar, who was collateral damage in a crash between Alex Albon, Nico Hülkenberg and Kevin Magnussen. The team worked wonders to fix the Australian’s car during a brief Red Flag period and surprised the field when they bolted on his Pirellis ahead of the restart.  

However, despite their speedy work, the team were unable to get the car back to full strength, with too many repairs required in a short space of time. Returning to the track a lap down with damage to his car, it was always unlikely that Oscar would pick up any points without a Safety Car, and so he focused his attention elsewhere.  

“There was a crash behind me, and I ended up getting involved, not much more to say, I don’t think,” he told F1TV when asked about the crash. “Unfortunately, when you qualify in that sort of position, you leave yourself in the hands of others.  

“Today, that was the case. It was a lonely race, still a lot of learning, I can’t thank the guys enough for getting the cars back together. That is 70 more laps around a track I had never been to before. Thank you to the team.  

“We just treated it as a test session more than anything, trying to see what we could learn in terms of tyres. I had some things to try and learn from, from yesterday, and I think we did a decent job of that.”