Former President Donald Trump appeared as a guest of McLaren at the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday. Trump entered the paddock and followed with great attention before making his way to the McLaren pit.
After waving to the crowd from McLaren’s pit box, Trump chatted with Zak Brown, McLaren’s American CEO. He also met with F1 boss Stefano Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem. Of course, McLaren would win the race, which was an unexpected result considering Max Verstappen’s dominance this season and in qualifying and the sprint race earlier in the weekend – the race recap can be found here.
After the race, Trump found Lando Norris to talk to. Norris later told the media he was “honored” that Trump came to speak with him. He also said Trump told him he was his good luck charm.
The TV announcers took the opportunity to proclaim Norris’ victory by saying, “Norris trumps Lando” in Miami as he crossed the finish line.
Trump’s Formula 1 appearance comes at a highly controversial time for him, as he is facing criminal proceedings over hush money payments. His presence stirred emotions on both sides of the aisle as people cheered and booed as he walked out of the garage and onto pit lane. When asked about his visit, McLaren put together a statement explaining how Trump came to the team’s garage. It follows below.
“McLaren is a non-political organization, but we recognize and respect the office of the President of the United States. When the request was made to visit our garage on race day, we accepted, along with the President of the FIA and the CEOs of Liberty Media and Formula 1.
“We were honored that McLaren Racing was chosen to represent Formula 1, giving us the opportunity to showcase the world-class engineering we bring to motorsport.”
Norris described his interaction with Trump in more detail at the post-race press conference when asked what he thought of the former president’s presence.
“He saw me afterwards, came up to me and congratulated me. I guess it’s an honor because whenever you have someone like that, it must be an honor for you to have them come up to you and take time out of their life to show their respect for what you’ve done . He said he was my good luck charm because of my win,” Norris laughed. “I don’t know if he’ll come to more races now, but yeah, there’s a lot of special people, cool people who were here this weekend. Donald is someone you have to have a lot of respect for anyway, and anyone who recognizes what you can do and what you can do and who recognizes the work ethic is something to be thankful for. And I was, so yeah, a cool moment.”