The Brazilian Grand Prix once again proved its one of Formula 1’s best events with an action-packed race with plenty of title ramifications.
Here’s everything we learned from Interlagos.
This is Norris's title to lose now
Given Lando Norris has a 24-point lead with just three races (and a sprint) remaining, this has to be his title to lose right now.
It’s by no means comfortable. A Zandvoort-like DNF in Las Vegas could instantly wipe out that lead, but equally, should the post-Baku trend continue for Norris, there’s every reason to believe he could take another step towards the title there and even setup his first championship point for Qatar.
Norris has had the beating of his main competition - Oscar Piastri - at every race since that Zandvoort disaster and Norris appears to be in the form of his life at exactly the right time.
He is just better able to deal with a sliding McLaren in low-grip conditions, while Piastri’s having to abandon the driving style that served him so well in the first half of the season.
That’s returning the Norris-Piastri picture far closer to what it was in 2024 rather than early 2025.
So even if the McLaren struggles again at a low-grip Vegas circuit, given Piastri’s low-grip struggles, what’s to stop him extending that margin even if the McLaren isn’t at the front?
...so Red Bull has to take more risks to beat him
Having finished fourth from sixth on the grid in the sprint - lacking the pace to challenge McLaren - Red Bull took a big set-up gamble that backfired badly with its first double Q1 exit since 2006.
It’s evidence that, under new team boss Laurent Mekies, it’s throwing everything at capturing that drivers’ championship and isn’t afraid to take big swings that can win it races - like in Monza - or go disastrously wrong like in Brazilian GP qualifying.
Ironically, as Mark Hughes detailed in his post-race analysis, it was that gamble failing which prompted Red Bull to take a pitlane start and make wholesale set-up changes and a new suit of engine components that made Verstappen’s stunning comeback possible.
Given Verstappen is 49 points back and will fall out of title contention if he’s convincingly beaten by the McLarens in Vegas, Red Bull’s going to have to keep taking big swings for Verstappen to catch Norris.
Antonelli shows what Mercedes saw in him
This was comfortably Kimi Antonelli’s best F1 weekend yet as he finished ahead of team-mate George Russell in all four competitive sessions across the weekend.
It was the kind of weekend-long performance that made you go ‘oh, so that’s why Mercedes was so excited by this teenager’.
It has come later in the season than expected - there were prior flashes like the Miami sprint pole and Canada podium - but it’s better late than never, given Mercedes are in a tight fight for second in the constructors’ championship.
Just like with Miami and Canada, team boss Toto Wolff reckons Antonelli benefitted from going to a circuit he’s never raced on, with “lower expectations” and less pressure.
“Next year he will come to these tracks that he knows without expecting to kill it, and that's the learning year, the year that we always expected to come with all the ups and downs,” Wolff said.
“Today is an up, definitely a good moment. [But] there will be more difficult ones, but let's see the next three races.
“We're seeing the young boy becoming a young man and performing.”
Battle for sixth is a two-man job
In the four-team scrap for sixth in the constructors' championship, Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso led the way in the sprint with sixth place and Ollie Bearman did so in the grand prix with the same result. However, the highest-scoring team overall in that group was actually Racing Bulls, thanks to 10 points for Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar finishing seventh and eighth respectively on Sunday.
That indicates how vital it is that both drivers contribute in this battle. Sauber's Gabriel Bortoleto had a nightmare weekend so didn't contribute, Haas's Esteban Ocon struggled in both qualifying sessions and didn't score, albeit with the caveat that without picking up a puncture that forced him to pit as the grand prix restarted after a safety car he might have done, while Aston Martin's Lance Stroll lost a point in the sprint when he was passed by Pierre Gasly in the closing stages. So it's only Racing Bulls that managed a double points score.
"We didn't have the pace of Bearman in the Haas today, but we outscore all our rivals in the championship and give ourselves a healthier gap to seventh in the constructors' championship," was team principal Alan Permane's verdict.
And that sums up the power of having two cars in the points places as it puts Racing Bulls a handy 10 points clear of Aston Martin, with 20 points covering the four-team group.
And across the final three races (and a sprint), it's possible that this battle and the tens of millions in money that comes with it could be decided by which team can get both drivers in the points when the opportunity exists to do so.
So far, such instances have been rare - this was the third time Racing Bulls has managed it in a grand prix this year, matching what Haas and Aston Martin have managed, but for Sauber, it's only happened once. - Edd Straw
Cracks are showing at Ferrari
As if Ferrari’s disastrous double DNF in Brazil wasn’t bad enough, things were made worse in the aftermath of the race when comments emerged from Ferrari president John Elkann questioning the unity of the team and calling for the drivers to “talk less”.
Quite how the drivers talking less would have salvaged its Brazil or much of its 2025 season is unclear.
As far as Brazil was concerned, Ferrari couldn’t get its SF-25 into the right window until grand prix qualifying, where Leclerc qualified third.
Leclerc’s chances of converting that into a third straight podium were dashed on Sunday through no fault of his own via the Antonelli/Piastri clash, so it leaves another frustrating ‘what if?’ for Ferrari as to what Leclerc could have achieved without that.
Lewis Hamilton had a miserable weekend with a self-inflicted DNF, which, coupled with Leclerc’s misfortune, gives Ferrari a mountain to climb to recover the second (and third) place in the championship it lost across a bruising weekend.
The Alpine isn't hopeless in all conditions
F1 2025’s worst car thrived at Interlagos with a pair of points finishes across Saturday and Sunday, both courtesy of Pierre Gasly.
That ended a painful wait for a first point since Spa, in Gasly’s words, “it's been a very long walk in the middle of nowhere for three months” for Alpine and its drivers.
Gasly was even “a little bit disappointed” with his Sunday because the Alpine A525 showed the potential for even more than that at Interlagos, which did negate a lot of the aerodynamic inefficiency that has dogged the car so far in 2025.
His newly signed team-mate Franco Colapinto wasn’t able to utilise that potential, feeling his car “wasn’t very comfortable to drive”, with lots of sliding in the low-grip conditions.
That continued the trend of when the Alpine is a points-scorer in 2025, Gasly is the only driver able to capitalise on it.
What Tsunoda is clinging to
After his “best weekend in a long time” in Mexico (even if that was only an 11th-place finish), Yuki Tsunoda was the slowest car in qualifying in Brazil and finished almost a minute behind Verstappen.
Some of that gap is explained by the double-hit penalty (one for clattering into Lance Stroll and the other for not serving the penalty for that correctly, a team error), which Laurent Mekies believed prevented him from fighting for points.
He also points to the strong pace in Tsunoda’s final stint, but it was easy for him to fire in some quick laptimes while much of the midfield was stuck behind Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls.
Hardly for the first time, Tsunoda is only left with hypotheticals at the end of the weekend, rather than points, and one strong stint to cling to.
“Would and should do not win races, so we can only pocket the last strong stint in free air that he has done,” Mekies admitted.
It’s tough to see how we aren’t heading into Tsunoda’s final three races with Red Bull.
