Lando Norris admitted he “overreacted” in some of the comments he made following his clash with Max Verstappen in the Austrian Grand Prix.
However the McLaren driver also questioned the stewards’ handling of parts of their battle for the lead which ended when the pair collided on lap 64. Verstappen was able to continue and finish fifth while Norris retired in the pits.
Norris said he was especially confused by their decision not to investigate whether Verstappen gained an advantage by leaving the track when the McLaren driver overtook him at turn three on the lap before they collided.
“I think Max could have made the corner, honestly,” said Norris in response to a question from RaceFans. “He didn’t try, which is probably the main fact of it in this part.
“I didn’t squeeze him. It wasn’t like I was side-by-side and almost pushing him off, that kind of thing. He took a very easy route out of it.
“It’s complicated, it’s not as simple as saying this happened, that happened. There should be a different outcome. But I’d out of the whole thing that was probably the little bit that I didn’t understand the most. And the gap he had out of the corner was bigger than what we had going into.
“So in a sense of him going off-track and gaining an advantage, he was actually the one that did it in that case. Especially with the fact that I didn’t even push him off.
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“I think there just needs to be some clarification on things. And there needs to be consistency from this point onwards, because if that’s clear what we can do then I think everyone’s happy.”
Norris was given a five-second time penalty for leaving the track on four occasions, the last of which occured as he tried to pass Verstappen four laps earlier. Norris pointed out he gave up the advantage gained by letting Verstappen pass him and believes that error should not have counted towards his four track limits ‘strikes’ which led to his penalty.
“We got five seconds for trying to overtake and it not going correctly,” said Norris. “I didn’t even know I had the five-second penalty, I didn’t even know why we served the five-second penalty before we retired the car.”
He said it would have been “common sense” not to penalise him for that off-track moment. “I tried to do an overtake, I’ve locked up, I’ve gone off the track – just. I had to then avoid the sausage kerb.
“But immediately I gave…
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