Lando Norris says he had made his mind up already in Brazil to sacrifice a Formula 1 sprint win for Oscar Piastri as payback for what his team-mate did there.
The Briton dominated the Qatar sprint race from the start, and spent much of the event backing off to help his pursuing team-mate stay in the DRS zone as he fought against the pursuing George Russell.
But as the cars came out of the final corner, Norris backed off to let Piastri through and hand the Australian the victory.
With Russell being close to Piastri, executing the move was not easy, but Norris said that it was important he gave payback for his Australian team-mate having given up the win in the Brazilian GP sprint for him at a time when he was fighting for the world championship.
“I know it was a bit closer than what I was wanting,” said Norris afterwards. “But I planned to do it since Brazil. Just what I thought was best is probably a little bit sketchy.
“The team told me not to do it, but I thought I could get away with it, and we did. So honestly, I don't mind.
“I'm not here to win sprint races. I'm here to win races and a championship, but that's not gone to plan. So I did the best we could, and I look forward to tomorrow.”
Norris had mentioned the idea of sacrificing the win for Piastri to his engineer before the race but, with Russell so close at the end, the radio communication from the pit wall was urging for there to be no change of position.
On the final lap, Norris was told over the team radio from the pitwall: “Finish in this order. We are happy.”
Piastri knew there was the potential for the Norris plan to play out but was complimentary about things after the chequered flag. “Thank you for the team work. Much appreciated,” he said over the team radio.
Norris felt that there was more potential in his car than he showed over the Qatar race, having helped Piastri throughout.
Asked if there was more speed, Norris said: “A little bit. It's always difficult to know, but we scored 1-2. That's what we were aiming for today.
“We've got maximum points, so we're happy. We're happy as a team, we've executed things perfectly, and I think the pace was good.
“I probably could have pushed a little bit more than what I was doing, but we wanted to keep the others behind. So we tried to help out and not let George get too close. So we did our job, and that's the main thing.”
