Lando Norris claims to be calm regarding criticism, after failing to fully capitalize on the opportunity to reduce the gap with Oscar Piastri in the championship. The British driver is now 25 points behind his McLaren teammate, with 199 points still up for grabs until the end of the season.
In the Azerbaijan Formula 1 Grand Prix, Piastri retired on the first lap after crashing into the barrier alone, a day after doing the same in the qualifying session. Norris, who could have significantly reduced the difference with the Australian, only finished seventh, scoring six points. As a result, the gap narrowed from 31 to 25 points, a smaller gain than if Piastri had finished second behind the British driver.
When asked if the result in Baku represented a missed opportunity, Norris replied: “I’m doing the best I can in every race, and if you think that way, every time I finished second or worse this year was a missed opportunity”.
He admitted to being frustrated with his position in the championship: “Of course, I wanted to do better in Baku, but I needed to do better in qualifying. We went out on the track first and that was our decision. We paid the price for it,” he said.
Norris emphasized that he sought to extract everything from the car during the race: “I could have ended up in the wall or gone straight and something worse could have happened, but I felt like I was close to maximizing performance in Baku, even if it didn’t seem that way from the outside,” he added.
Finally, the British driver reaffirmed his determination for the final stages of the season: “I’m doing the best I can and I know I still have a lot of points to recover against a very good, incredible driver. I just need to keep my head down,” the British driver concluded.
