Lando Norris calls finishing runner-up at British Grand Prix ‘pretty insane’

Norris held off fellow Briton Lewis Hamilton to finish second behind Max Verstappen at Silverstone.

Lando Norris finished second at the British Grand Prix (David Davies/PA) (PA Wire)

Lando Norris described his second-placed finish at the British Grand Prix as “pretty insane” after he held off Lewis Hamilton in the closing stages at Silverstone.

Max Verstappen cruised to a sixth win in a row to extend his championship lead to 99 points in his pursuit of a hat-trick of world titles.

But the late battle between British pair Norris and Hamilton ignited the home crowd at the Northamptonshire circuit.

A safety car put Norris’ runner-up spot in doubt after McLaren elected to put him on the harder, more durable, tyre, rather than the speedier soft compound.

But Norris, 23, managed to keep Hamilton, 38, at bay in a tantalising battle between the two countrymen at a sold-out Silverstone.

“Pretty insane,” Norris said in his post-race interview. “Thanks to the whole team who have done an amazing job.

“To put me on hard tyres, I don’t know why! It was an amazing fight with Lewis to hold him off.

“I wanted the softs. I feel like it might make a bit more sense, especially with the safety car coming out but I don’t care, I’m P2 so all good!

“Big thanks to all the British fans here supporting us. Oscar (Piastri) did an amazing job and he would have been P3 without the safety car. He deserved it.”

Piastri finished fourth in the second McLaren, ahead of Hamilton’s team-mate George Russell in fifth.

Hamilton labelled the McLaren as a “rocket ship” on his team radio and admitted he had no answer for Norris’ pace.

“Congratulations to Lando and McLaren, my family where I first started,” he said.

“To see them back up there looking so strong. That thing was rapid through the high speed corner, wow. I could not keep up!

“It’s positive for us as a team to know we are not that far away. We just need to keep pushing and we can catch those guys at the front.

“We had a good little battle there. I just didn’t have the grunt on the straights.”