Lando Norris has admitted that he’s not “proud” that his involvement in McLaren’s team orders saga at Formula 1’s Hungarian Grand Prix “clouded” Oscar Piastri’s win.
Piastri headed a McLaren 1-2 at the Hungaroring to achieve his maiden F1 success, but the post-race talk surrounded Norris’ wait to swap places with his team-mate.
The Australian seized the lead at the start and was controlling proceedings when McLaren opted to hand Norris a two-lap undercut which provided him track position.
But while he received repeated instructions to let Piastri back through at a “convenient” time, Norris waited until there were three laps remaining to relinquish the spot.
Although he insisted post-race that he intended to hand back the position at some stage, the Briton has conceded that he was wrong to overshadow Piastri’s success.
“Could it have been handled slightly differently from both a team side and a personal side? Yes. Yeah, absolutely.” Norris said.
“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.
“Yeah. I don’t mind about that. 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 we had a 1-2, and that was barely a headline after the race, the fact we had a 1-2 and nothing was really spoken about from that side.
“Yeah, that’s the kind of thing I felt worse about.
“Apart from that, yeah, we discussed it, we’ve spoken about it, both sides could have done things a bit better and a little bit differently.
“It’s almost not good that we had it, but a good moment that we’ve had it, we’ve learned from it, and hopefully it’s done better next time.”
Norris has explained that in hindsight he would have surrendered the position as soon as he was told, citing that it even cost him the chance to win the race on merit.
“Just let him past straight away,” he answered when asked what he would have done in that scenario again. “Such a stupid thing that I didn’t, because we’re free to race.
“I could have just let him past and still tried to overtake and to race him. Sounds so simple now, but it’s not something that went through my head at the time.
“Such a simple thing like that, you know, I could have done. But I was just in a good rhythm, and things were going well at the time.
“I questioned it at the time, 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. I was a bit silly and didn’t let him go earlier.”
Norris had insisted at the time that the situation could have been avoided, but McLaren boss Andrea Stella revealed the team was guarding against pitstop mistakes.
The one-time F1 race victor has since accepted that the Woking-based squad committed to the right calls in order to protect its first 1-2 result since September 2021.
“We do things for reasons. We didn’t need to, it was better for Oscar’s race also to go slightly longer and have slightly fresher tyres and that kind of thing,” he said.
“So inevitably, from a correct strategy side of it, you are always going to box the second driver first and how late can you box in the race.
“It was actually quite an early stop sequence at the time, it was quite early in the stop sequences, and that is why we were a little bit concerned about tyres.
“And that’s why they boxed me first and let him do two laps more, otherwise, yes, they could have just boxed him before.
“For both of our races at the time it was better to do it the way we did it.
“As done by the team for doing it for that reason, so potentially I just made it a little bit more complicated and nerve-wracking for the team than what it needed to be.”
Pressed on whether he had spoken to his team-mate about his thoughts, Norris concluded: “I think he knows.
“We spoke straight away and did a lot of our interviews together and things like that. I said I felt bad for what happened and the way his first win went.
“I hope he knows it in that kind of way and I think he does, so I’m fine with it.”
