Norris Reveals What Robbed Him Of Win In Canada Ani It Wasn't Safety Car
F1Tuesday, 11 June 2024 at 14:00
Lando Norris analyzed what he and his team did wrong during the most recent race and what basically prevented him from scoring his career's second victory.
McLaren F1 driver Lando Norris finished second during the 2024 Canadian Grand Prix. As tends to be the trend with his second-place finishes, it was yet again behind Max Verstappen.
However, in the past, he usually didn't have a chance to match the Dutchman, and last weekend in Canada, it seemed as if he was actually faster.
At one point in during his first stint on the intermediate tires, Norris overtook both Verstappen and George Russell and then went on to pull a gap of a couple of seconds on them.
The problem was that the following sequence of events and decisions led to him not winning the race. Two specific moments played a huge role in the outcome.
First was the timing of the first safety car, and the second was when Norris stayed out on intermediate tires longer than any of his rivals to perform an overcut. Asked which one might have hurt his race more, he said:
"No, staying out on the Intermediate helped me. It helped me have a chance against George, so I overcut him."
"I didn't do a good enough job afterwards, and he was clearly way quicker than us in the dry and even on the Hard tires. So, no, that was completely the right call and a good decision from us to stay out. It gave me a lot of lap time, but..."
Lando Norris came out of the pits for the stint on the soft compound tires right behind Verstappen, but he had trouble getting temperature into his tires and making them work.
He still might have a chance to catch the triple World Champion, but he just didn't have enough pace at the end of the race. The Papaya driver suggested the main mistake happened when the first safety car was deployed.
While it wasn't initially clear whether Norris got screwed over with the timing of the safety car, it was later revealed he had enough time to react and go box for a new set of tires, and he stayed out. He said:
"And it's not the timing of the first Safety Car. I had enough time to box and we didn't box. So this was a mistake on us as a team. And yeah, just something we didn't do a good enough job with."
Had Norris boxed, he would have come out on the track in first place and would have it much easier to retain that position. Instead, he lost two.
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