GREAT WILL OF CHINA

Battling Lando surprised himself and had to pay up a bet to his team after leaving Ferraris in his slipstream

- DANIEL MOXON

LANDO NORRIS was so sure the Shanghai podium was out of reach that he bet against himself.

And now the Briton owes his McLaren race engineer some cash after his latest superb drive.

Max Verstappen predictably won the race but Norris was star of the show in FI's first Chinese Grand Prix since 2019.

He got lucky with the timing of a safety car which propelled him up to second place but showed great pace to hold off the other Red Bull of Sergio Perez.

And he was more than 10 seconds clear of both Ferraris, who surprisingly struggled for pace.

Afterwards, Norris said he was stunned by how slow Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz had been. He said: "I made it a bet over how far behind the Ferraris we would finish today and I thought it would be 35 seconds - I was very wrong in that! "I'm happy to be wrong - it was a good day for everyone."