At the Brazilian Grand Prix, McLaren proved that their nightmarish Honda days are behind them. The British outfit grabbed their first podium since the 2014 Australian Grand Prix. That happened more than five years ago, so the Brazilian GP podium was an unexpected surprise.

In a spot of heavy banter, the McLaren team posted a video on Twitter where they were desperately looking for something. It soon transpired that the missing item was a key to the trophy cabinet, as it had been a while since it was last used.

“I’m happy for the entire team, everyone has done so much work throughout the year,” a delighted Andreas Seidl told Sky F1.

“Performing P4 for us is a big step forward, and a great motivation for all of us to keep working hard with the clear aim that at some point, that we fight for podiums down to our own outright performance. He’s (Sainz) done a sensational job all year and he deserves it.”

Even, Sainz himself had to admit that his drive in Interlagos was his best race ever. His extraordinary drive from dead last on the grid to third, was aided by a bold 1-stop strategy.

“My best, definitely,” he crowed. “Because it was a normal race. It was dry, people were between one and two stops and we committed to a one-stop.”

“I managed to extend on the soft and then the management on the medium kicked in. Then I started passing Stroll, passing Lando [Norris] and other people, and all of a sudden I found myself in P8.”

“Then, the decision came to either pit or not and we decided not to. For once we took a bit of a gamble and this time it paid off. The two SC restarts were probably the most difficult restarts of my life.”