Norris Reveals He Ignored Team Orders To Return Sprint Victory To Piastri
F1Saturday, 30 November 2024 at 17:07
Lando Norris discussed why he gave away the sprint race victory to Oscar Piastri at the 2024 Qatar Grand Prix weekend.
McLaren Racing F1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri started the sprint race from P1 and P3. Thanks to Piastri's good launch of the line the two were in P1 and P2 since after the first corner of the opening lap.
The 24-year-old then helped his Australian teammate by giving him DRS on the straights to protect him from the very fast George Russell.
Due to the DRS train created by McLaren, there were no positions changed in the top 5 throughout the whole sprint up until the final lap, when, after the last corner, Norris suddenly pulled to the side to let Piastri win the race.
This came as a huge surprise as there was no prior communication on the team radio about such a maneuver. Norris later told F1TV he simply wanted to return his teammate the favor from Brazil when the 23-year-old switched positions with him before the end of the race to help him in the championship.
"It was probably a bit closer than what I was wanting, but I planned to do it since Brazil. It's just what I thought was best. It's probably a little bit sketchy."
Piastri was closely followed by Russell throughout the whole race, so when Norris slowed down before the finish line, he risked being overtaken by the Mercedes driver.
That wouldn't have been ideal as the Papaya team is fighting for the Constructors' Championship with Ferrari and every single point matters now.
"The team told me not to do it but I thought I could get away with it, and we did. Honestly, I don't mind. I'm not here to win Sprint Races."
"I'm here to win [Grand Prix] races – and a championship, but that's not gone to plan. But I did the best we could and I look forward to tomorrow."
"We scored one-two and that's what we were aiming for today. We've got maximum points, so we're happy. We're happy as a team, we've executed things perfectly."
"The pace was good, I probably could have pushed a little bit more than what I was doing, but we wanted to keep the others behind so we tried to help out and not let George get too close. We did our job and that's the main thing."
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