Lando Norris says he didn’t mean to put an aggressive move on Carlos Sainz Jnr after being shown the black-and-white ‘unsporting conduct’ flag during the Spanish Grand Prix.
The McLaren driver was passed by the Ferrari on the pit straight during the race. “I need look at it from above, bird’s eye view and stuff,” he told Sky.“I was going to defend to Carlos and I moved over and then I moved again slightly, which you’re not really allowed to do. So I didn’t mean to do anything aggressive, I knew he was coming past. So it was just the way it is. But I didn’t mean anything.”
Norris admitted the team needed to out-qualify Ferrari in Spain in order to stand a chance of beating them. He qualified ninth yesterday, behind the Ferrari pair and team mate Daniel Ricciardo.
“We didn’t show our potential yesterday, from my side,” said Norris. “Daniel did and he finished sixth,” Norris explained.
“But the Ferraris have been good all year, I don’t know why people underestimate them so much. They’re Ferrari and they’ve been one of the quickest cars in terms of cornering all season.
“So when you come to this track, where there’s less long straights and things like we’ve had in Imola and so on, they’re quick. They’ve been quick all season.
He said McLaren’s only chance to beat Ferrari around Barcelona was on a Saturday. “We knew they were going to be particularly good here and on quali pace, we probably could have matched them yesterday, even though they probably had a slightly better car.
“But today, in the long run, when you kind of need a bit more rear and you have to rely on the car a little bit more, then we struggled. So I think we knew this was going to be the case.
“We know the weaknesses of the car and today, when it’s struggling more with the rear, that’s when we struggled more too. So I think we have a plan of what we need to still try and improve on. It’s not easy, but we’re doing what we can.”
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Jere (@jerejj)
9th May 2021, 17:59
A relatively subpar race from him, at least compared to Ricciardo, but probably just a one-off.
erikje
9th May 2021, 19:41
Ricciardo was as bad in weaving as was Norris. A stain on the team.
He was getting away with it, but didn’t deserve this.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
10th May 2021, 0:58
Ricciardo was weaving early in the straight to break the tow he was giving Perez which is legal whereas Landos move was vary late.
Even Brundle was a bit mystified by the warning Ricciardo got.
F1oSaurus (@)
10th May 2021, 6:33
@dbradock Hamilton got penalized for that same weaving. I was wondering why Verstappen didn’t get a warning for weaving either.
MartaM
10th May 2021, 4:32
FIA effectively sanctioned this behaviour, making the move into the braking zone only after seeing the following car’s intention in the mirror, a few years ago and DR wasn’t an orphan in this race either. The stain is dripping with red, gold & blue.
David
9th May 2021, 20:27
Nobody was able to overtake until the tyres strategies got out of phase with each other so Lando ended up well back after the first stint, which shows the price you pay for a poor qualifying.
F1oSaurus (@)
10th May 2021, 6:40
It was odd how much dangerous late moving there was this race.
Also a lot of weaving down the straight. For instance Verstappen keeps weaving back and forth trying to break the tow when Hamilton is coming for his pass.
BasCB (@bascb)
10th May 2021, 7:32
Ricciardo kept doing this all the time as well. Until he got called out to stop doing so by his engineer (almost certainly after a call up from race control)
Mayrton
10th May 2021, 9:59
The question is whether to fix driver behavior or car characteristics. Do we want defense to be part of racing or do we want processional safe DRS overtakes? It seems we are more and more going for the money interests of the companies participating. Not too much racing, overtakes based on power gap and drs and please no defending because that is dangerous…. highly regulated and technical dominance race wins. This sport is in worse condition than we all think, it needs some new people.
Mayrton
10th May 2021, 9:54
Lets not forget that because current cars rarely get an overtake opportunity (need all kinds of artificial things like charging and DRS etc) this is a bigger issue than it should be. Otherwise it would be less of an issue since the car overtaking can be more patient, knowing there’ll be another opportunity. The real cat mouse thing we all watch for but is destroyed by aero dependence of the cars. Defence is no longer a part of racing ever since these horrible cars.