Despite an impressive comeback to finish fourth at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, it wasn’t enough for Lando Norris to shake off the feeling he was unfairly eliminated by a yellow flag in qualifying.
Norris was running his last timed lap of Q1 and was ready to do better when he met the slow-moving Esteban Ocon in the final stretch. The yellow flag appeared, meaning Norris had to give up the lap and stop racing. Ocon, on the other hand, limped back to the pits for a long time with a puncture under the white flag (indicating a slow-moving car).
Norris moved up from 15th to fourth in the standings ahead of Max Verstappen on Sunday, but says the incident has had a major impact on his scoring potential.
“No, it wasn’t fair. You don’t have to be a scientist to figure that out,” Norris said. “It’s not for me to decide, it’s not for me to say. It wasn’t fair, and it ruined my weekend… I got fourth, and I know it wasn’t bad, but it could have been better. Oscar. [Piastri] Showed what was possible.
“It was unfair. There was no yellow the whole lap and then the yellow came out as soon as I got there. Do you think I would have gone off the track right before that? Yes. Would I have made it easy to finish in the top 15? Yes. I know a lot of people think I messed up the lap, but even if I had gone off the track and lost two-tenths of a second, I would have made it easy.
“People can say what they want and I find it very funny, but it was out of my control and it was unfair. It cost us a lot of points in the championship and ruined our weekend. So it’s disappointing, especially because of how good the car was. I’m one of those people who thinks about what could have been, not how we did. [in the race] Not necessarily, but I am very satisfied [Sunday’s] Performance.”
Norris was disappointed with his qualifying result, but admitted beating Verstappen was not a realistic goal before the race and the team had predicted eighth place as the likely result.
“I was a little surprised. When I started in 15th place, I didn’t expect to beat him. They were all boxing and we were behind them, so I was actually about 22 seconds behind where they were. So I didn’t expect to be able to build a gap and box past him.
“But Max had six laps to catch and when Ferrari got behind I was a few laps behind and I knew his tyres were a bit hot and he couldn’t attack me anymore so I raced well and I knew I couldn’t defend against Carlos. [Sainz]But I think I can defend Max.
“But the most important thing is that I defended myself against the Czechs. [Perez] And he didn’t let Oscar get ahead of him, and that’s why we won. So I did my bit for the team, and I’m very happy about that, because it led us to P1 in the constructors’ category. So that’s probably the part that makes me the happiest.”
