Norris says rivals need ‘more self awareness’ after ‘avoiding extremely big crashes’

Lando Norris said some of his rivals showed poor awareness of other cars during the restart in yesterday’s Mexican Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver described how he had to back off to avoid being caught in a multi-car crash as drivers moved towards each other on the high-speed run to the first corner at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Norris climbed from 17th on the grid to finish fifth in yesterday’s race and said afterwards he “enjoyed the whole thing apart from my restart.”

“I probably had to avoid a very big crash,” he explained. “Just people coming across, not probably realising that people can be three-abreast.

“I avoided two extremely big crashes which would have been very nasty. So, a bit more self awareness of some drivers would be great.”

However he said the near-miss was “not why I lost out” at the restart and fell back four places. “I lost out because of a bad start, but I lost out even more because of these things.”

Norris was thrilled by his car’s performance in the race as he recovered to finish fifth.

“The pace was amazing. Already from lap one, there was a lot of management involved and already when I came over the line the first time, I got told to cool the engine. So, we maybe weren’t perfectly set up for these things and I couldn’t maybe push as much as I wanted to at times.

“But in the times I could, which is a lot of the second stint, the pace was excellent. To go from 14th, 15th to fifth to have better pace than almost everyone bar Hamilton and Max [Verstappen] was very encouraging for us. So, as perfect a day as I could probably ask for.”

McLaren made an unorthodox strategy call for Norris at the start of the race, as he was the only driver to line up on the soft compound tyres. But he said it was “absolutely” a worthwhile move.

“It just helped me a bit in the start, off the line and things like that. It’s always tough in turn one, it can go your way, it can not go your way.

“But I think we played everything smart, I think we played it well. Maybe the Safety Car and a couple of things weren’t perfectly timed for us, the VSC and so forth. But, otherwise I think everything pretty much went our way and we maximised today.”

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2023 Mexican Grand Prix

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