Lando Norris’ outing at the inaugural Miami GP didn’t go according to plan and the McLaren star partly blames Pierre Gasly for it.
Norris’ Miami GP went off to a decent start when he qualified P8 for the main race. It was an unexpected but welcome result in the McLaren garage, but team principal Andreas Seidl did insist that they didn’t have a top 10 car for the weekend.
It proved to be a correct prediction, as we saw Norris and Daniel Ricciardo fall down the pecking order on Sunday’s race. However, the former’s race came to a premature end of lap 41. The right rear tyre of Norris’ MCL36, clipped AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly’s front left.
This ended Norris’ Miami GP, as his tyre came off and his car spun on the middle off the track. After the race, Norris revealed what happened and why he felt so disappointed about the outcome.
“Someone just said on the radio that he (Gasly) was going to retire or something,” Norris said. “If that is the case, then I think what he did was silly. If you’re gonna retire, you just get out of the way for the people racing!”
McLaren had the pace for a P8 or P9 finish, says Lando Norris
Despite what Seidl said, Norris believed that he could have scored a couple of points for the team. He laments at the way his race ended, and adds that there wasn’t much he could have done to avoid the crash. Norris was in 13th place when he clipped the front left of Gasly’s car.
“He was looking at his right mirror, drifting across the track,” the 22-year old continued. “Of course you could have said I could have left a bit more of room, but I don’t expect him to stay in the middle.”
“A shame, we could have scored a eighth place or ninth place which is a couple of points but better than none. It would have been nice but it didn’t end that way. So frustrating, but not the end of the world.”
Norris’ pointless outing in Miami means that he’s seventh in the Drivers’ Championship with 35 points to his name. In the Constructors’ Standings, McLaren are fourth behind Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes.
