It was a Jeddah Grand Prix in chiaroscuro for McLaren. The English team, in fact, saw Daniel Ricciardo conquer the fifth place, while Lando Norris was unable to do better than the tenth and now, when at the end of the season only the last round in Abu Dhabi is missing, the gap in the standings from Ferrari is 38.5 points.
Norris also saw Charles Leclerc overrun in the drivers’ classification. The Monegasque Ferrari currently occupies fifth position with 158 points, while the Englishman from McLaren is relegated to sixth, at 154, and is tailed by Carlos Sainz just 4.5 points away.
At the end of a chaotic race, Norris lashed out at the race direction and, specifically, against the rule that allows tires to be changed under the red flag.
Lando was traveling in sixth position when Mick Schumacher violently crashed into the barriers in turn 22 and when the race was neutralized with the safety car Norris entered the pits to mount the hard Pirellis before returning to the track in fourteenth position thanks to the failure of many other pilots who followed him.
McLaren’s decision seemed strategically correct, but when race management decided shortly afterwards to display the red flag to allow the marshals to restore the barriers damaged by the German’s Haas, Norris’ GP took an unexpected turn.
“It happened a couple of times last year at Monza and also at Mugello. I’m always on the wrong side, so I’m probably the most penalized rider compared to others, but I think it’s just a very unfair rule that should be eliminated.”
“I think they should change it and introduce a mandatory pitstop with one of two different sets of tires. As it is, it ruins everything. All the efforts made vanish because of a stupid rule.”
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL35M
Photo by: Erik Junius
“I had already addressed this topic on both occasions. I can say what I want, but I’m not the one who writes the rules.”
“Obviously this rule makes everything exciting from a television point of view, and if that’s what they want to focus on then they won’t change it, but from my point of view I think it ruins racing.”
The tenth place in Jeddah follows the ninth obtained in Qatar and the tenth harvest in Brazil. A series of objectively disappointing results, but which according to Norris were determined by external factors, such as the puncture in the Losail race, which prevented McLaren from showing its true potential.
“It sucks. We deserved a lot more, we did a better job than the result we got. In Qatar and here we could have collected some good points ”.
“On both occasions we could have finished ahead of Ferrari and recovered some points in the Constructors. Maybe the final result won’t change, but we would have been much closer to them in the standings ”.
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