A few days after a somewhat controversial Hungarian GP that saw Oscar Piastri secure his maiden grand prix victory after a team orders row that dominated the radio chatter in the last 20 laps of the race, both drivers have now had time to react ahead of this weekend’s Belgian GP.
Lando Norris spent much of the final stages arguing with his race engineer Will Joseph over the radio, as the pit wall tried in quite varied ways to convince the Briton he should let his team-mate through after the early undercut in order to protect Norris from the potential threat of Lewis Hamilton left Piastri to run another two laps with used tyres, therefore losing the lead.
After some heavy back-and-forth on the radio, Norris ultimately backed off with two laps remaining, and allowed the Australian to retake the lead at the Hungaroring. But speaking on Thursday ahead of the Belgian GP, Norris admitted that perhaps it wasn’t the smartest decision to let it rumble on for so long in such a public manner, and admitted it “clouded over” Piastri’s first grand prix victory and McLaren’s first 1-2 since the 2021 Italian GP:
“It could it have been handled slightly differently from both a team side and from a personal side, absolutely,” said Norris. “And I think we wouldn’t be having this conversation now in some ways, whether people on the outside think and kind of come up with their own stories of what happened and what I would have done and wouldn’t have done, that kind of thing, I don’t mind about that.
“But it’s the things that I could have done, the fact that I kind of clouded over Oscar’s first race win in Formula 1 is something I’ve not felt too proud about. The fact that we had a 1-2 and that was barely a headline after the race, the fact that we had a 1-2 and nothing was really spoken about it from that side, that’s the kind of bits I felt worse about.
“But apart from that, yeah, we discussed it, we’ve spoken about it, both sides could have done things a little bit better and a little bit differently, but it’s almost not good that we had it – but it’s a good moment that we’ve had it, we’ve learned from it and hopefully it’s done better next time.”
When asked what he would do differently if given the chance, the winner of the Miami GP said he would let his team-mate pass “straight away” and try to have a shot at re-overtaking him later on, given the pair were allowed to race freely after reestablishing the order – and said he didn’t because the thought didn’t cross his mind at that moment:
“Just let him pass straight away. It’s such a stupid thing that I didn’t, because we’re free to race and I could have just let them pass and still try to overtake and to race them.
“It sounds so simple now but it’s not something that went through my head at the time. It’s such a simple thing like that, I could have done but I was just in a good rhythm and things were going well at the time so I questioned the team a few times.
“But I knew from as soon as they boxed me ahead of him or before him that I was going to have to let him go. It was a bit silly that I didn’t think of letting him go earlier.”
When pressed further on his reasonings for taking so long to obey team orders, Norris said he wasn’t “thinking the right thing” at the time, but is adamant that his intention to eventually let his team-mate pass was never in doubt for him:
“I didn’t think of that for whatever reason. I probably just wasn’t thinking of the right thing at the time. As soon as they basically said let him pass now, I let him pass straight away.
“I feel like it’s turned into a much bigger deal than a lot of people think it needs to be and that kind of thing. It was always clear, I always knew that I had to let him go but the longer I waited – just because it didn’t matter if I let him go straight away or at the end necessarily – the longer I waited the more people questioned whether I would have done it or not.
“I think that’s the main thing and a lot of people think that I would not have done it, but I knew I had to so that made no difference.
“I don’t need to replay it [in my head], I just know that I should’ve let him past earlier. I still could have had a chance to try and win the race myself and that’s what I should have done.”
The Briton also stressed that potential championship implications were not a factor in his decision-making – he’s currently 76 points behind championship leader Max Verstappen with 11 rounds and 3 sprints remaining – and said that he “shouldn’t have led the race” after losing out at the start:
“That had nothing to do with last week,” he said of the potential loss of seven points. “I shouldn’t have led the race, that’s the end of it.
I shouldn’t have been in the lead. Oscar got me off the line, he controlled it well, that was it. I shouldn’t have led the race and people should never have had the perception that our team are not biasing towards Lando.
If Oscar was leading the whole race, there’s absolutely zero reason why they should ask him to suddenly let me pass. If you’re thinking of it from a championship point of view. I don’t know when the point is of if I’m 10 points behind, 15 points behind or whatever.
“At what point then do you go can you help out a bit more, can you do this or can you do that. I don’t know when that point is and that’s not my decision. But when Oscar’s led the whole race, he controlled it well and just from a strategy side they boxed me first just to be safe.
“That’s just given the perception of something completely different. But it shouldn’t do. Internally we know it doesn’t.
“Oscar deserved to win and he did. Simple as that.”
And whilst Norris felt he clouded Piastri’s win, the Australian was much more relaxed about it. Although he admitted the whole situation “went on for a bit longer” than he would anticipate, there was “full trust” that the correct order would be reestablished before the end of the race:
“The last pit stop was only done that way because we were in a team 1-2 and there was full trust that we were going to reverse that,” said Piastri. “So for me I feel like I deserved it. I certainly don’t feel like it was given to me or anything like that. That’s not to say there’s not things I could still do better, but at the end of the day I put myself in a good position at the start of the race and if we were genuinely racing at that point then we wouldn’t have pitted the way we did.
So yeah, I feel like I deserved it.”
Now a grand prix winner, Piastri believes McLaren made “sensible” decisions in order to secure the 1-2 for the team and neutralise any threat from a charging Verstappen at the end, and emphasized how they are racing collectively to try and secure the constructors’ championship – in which Red Bull’s lead is becoming ever smaller as Sergio Perez continues to falter:
“I think there were very sensible decisions. We’ve gone through that part of things for sure. It’s not a given that if Max had got through Lewis and Charles he could have posed a threat.
“If Lewis kept going and we went behind him then it also could have still been a threat as we saw with Max in the end. So I think there were very sensible decisions and done with complete trust in Lando and myself in mind. So yeah, I think that side of things was very sensible.
“It’s obviously a little bit different when you’re fighting for wins. Of course there’s always the element of not wanting to give it up no matter what side of it you’re on. So it’s maybe something we need to adjust slightly but I think we always need to remember that we’re racing for the team and trying to win the Constructors’ Championship.”
When asked if he was surprised by Norris’s reluctance to give up the race lead, Piastri was very clear that it’s only “natural” for a racing driver to try and maintain a race lead, and pointed out that there were “nuances” to the situation that complicated the situation even more, like the possibility – which Norris mentioned earlier – of racing to the chequered flag if he had given up his lead at the first time of asking:
“I think I wasn’t surprised because he’s a racing driver winning an F1 race. It’s only natural to want to do that and give yourself every opportunity.
“Maybe it went on for a bit longer than I expected it to but I think that’s also something we need to discuss as a team whether there would have been more opportunities to race each other if things had been done a bit differently.
“We discuss a lot of things as a team but you can’t plan for every single scenario and this one admittedly had some nuances to it that meant we were in an unprecedented position before the race. So I’m not surprised at all that he wanted to keep the lead of the race and I think it’s only natural.”
The Australian joked he and Norris have been sharing McDonald’s and playing Monopoly together since the race, and made it clear it is “all good” between the two McLaren drivers despite possible tension from last Sunday:
“We’re all good. I think there’s still a lot of respect there between us and we know it goes both ways so we’re still all good.”
