There were so many obstacles for Lando Norris to overcome in achieving his karting kid dream of winning his home grand prix. Not just those of his rise to F1 and his progress there, his growth with McLaren, etc, but of this weekend in particular.

They were Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen and Ferrari. They each fell by the wayside – and Norris emerged grinning but not really knowing what to say, he who is normally so good with words.

Piastri

Piastri should really have won this race. He’d built up a 13sec lead over Norris by the time Lando, in the treacherous initial conditions, had found his way through Verstappen’s spray for a second time. How was Norris going to claw 13sec back over someone as fast as Piastri in the same car? It would require external circumstances.

Norris had run the early laps a distant third as Piastri applied the pressure to Verstappen and eventually passed on the eighth lap. It took Norris another three laps to follow his team-mate through past the gripless Red Bull and its skinny Monza wing. By which time he was 5sec behind.

But worse was to come. The rain intensified, everyone came in for new inters, and there was a delay changing Norris’ left-front wheel, allowing Verstappen ahead again. Over the next four laps, Piastri pulled out that 13s lead over them. Then a safety car – simply because conditions were deemed too wet, which wiped that Piastri gap. Then another (for a crashed Isack Hadjar).

Piastri was a little over-zealous preparing for the second restart, braking hard on Hangar Straight, Verstappen flying past in avoidance before falling back behind. The resultant 10sec penalty for Piastri took him out of the equation.

Verstappen

Verstappen had scored a beautiful pole, a few hundredths faster than Norris, using the skinny winged Red Bull to fly down the straights, a favourable headwind to still be super-fast in the fast corners and his own intuition to deliver the perfect lap. Norris had got the Vale chicane slightly off line in a McLaren, which really should have been ahead, if only marginally.

But Red Bull made that wing choice with the Sunday weather forecasting a 20% chance of light rain. The deluge we actually got – some falling a couple of hours before the start, another burst about 11 laps into the race – made that rear wing choice totally unsuitable.

Although he led the early stages, the car was soon understeering wide through the slow corners and snapping him off line on the exits of the faster ones. That’s how both Piastri and Norris eventually passed him – his subsequent spin after the second restart putting him way down and just another midfield runner in the rain. As it dried in the race’s latter stages, so he staged a recovery back to fifth, but way off the scope of McLaren’s radar.

Ferrari

The red cars had looked dynamite through the practices and into Q1 and Q2. Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were 1-2 in the latter session. But it all fell away in Q3, their engines not finding the expected power gain when used to the maximum, lining them up only fifth and sixth. But this was only a problem when the engine was turned up to Q3 mode and the cars were expected to be super-quick once more in the race, their Austria floor upgrade working well, allowing them to run a super-low ride height.

In the wet, that proved an unsuitable set-up. Like the Red Bull but for different reasons, it didn’t want to turn in and was a snappy handful on exit. “I can’t even express to you how hard it is,” said Hamilton after finishing a distant fourth after many adventures. “It’s not a car that likes those conditions.”

Hamilton’s late charge on softs brought him within sight of Nico Hülkenberg‘s Sauber, but when those softs faded, Hulk was able to claim the first podium of his 15-year F1 career at the 239th attempt. Leclerc – after gambling on a very premature change to slicks after the formation lap, just like George Russell and Mercedes – sank like a stone and suffered countless excursions on the way to 14th.

Norris

The problems of the others still needed to be fully exploited by Norris, of course. “Probably could have boxed for slicks a couple of laps before we did. But, you know, the first part of the race, Oscar and Max were fighting quite a lot, and I was pretty patient. I didn’t push too much. I tried to look after my tyres a little bit more for some of the later stages when it started to rain again, but it was probably the wrong thing to do. I probably should’ve just pushed because we went onto another set of inters.

“It’s just tough to not crash in these conditions. It sounds so obvious and easy, but the amount of moments you have, at Turn 1, the aquaplaning in 2, the aquaplaning into 9, where Hadjar crashed – you don’t realise how close sometimes we are to crashing and it all being in the bin in a matter of tenths. They are scary moments inside, but then they excite you in a way, and then you open your eyes, you concentrate again. It’s scary and thrilling at the same time.”

Then the reward. “Your mind just goes pretty blank. So, everything you might think before the race, you forget. I mean, the main thing is always just don’t f**k it up. That’s rule number one. But the last few laps, I was just looking into the crowd. I was just trying to take it all in, enjoy the moment, because it might never happen again. Hope it does, but these are memories that I’ll bring with me forever.”