Lando Norris says he’s moved on from his contentious yellow flag penalty in Qatar – but he fears that could yet be a “bad consequence” if McLaren misses out on the Formula 1 constructors’ title due to the lost points.
Norris was given a 10 second stop and go penalty for not slowing when yellow flags were shown after Ale Albon’s mirror was left lying on the track on the approach to Turn 1.
He initially dropped out of the top 10 but recovered to take 10th place and the fastest lap point – however Ferrari was able to significantly close the gap to just 21 points heading into the final race.
“I was disappointed,” said Norris when asked by this writer about putting the penalty behind him. “I wasn’t happy with myself on Sunday night, but I’ve not been down or anything over the last few days.
“It’s been nice that we can come here and focus already on the final weekend of the season. And there’s a lot of focus on it.
“There’s not been a bad consequence of what’s happened, it might be on Sunday afternoon I feel the consequence more so, but we’re working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen, and I don’t feel the real pain of last weekend.”
Norris insisted that it was impossible for him to have seen the yellow light on the straight.
“There was no yellow lights that I passed,” he said. You can say that there was one, but no chance any driver can see that. So I mean, not ideal. Obviously, I was pretty disappointed. I let a lot of people down, but it happened. It’s in the past.
“I’ve apologised to the team. I would never want something like that to happen. Normally, I think, pretty good with those kind of things, and we never take the risk and normally be on the safer side of things. #
“So it was just unfortunate, difficult to see the yellow flags in the dark and that kind of thing. Just a shame, but it’s happened, and I feel like I moved on pretty well from it.”
Asked about the scale of the penalty he said: “I’m going to have to accept the penalty for what it was. Yes, that’s the ruling. For what the safety measures were. You know, in an ideal world, maybe there could be some differences. I get why there’s a such a severe penalty for it, but no people were in danger. It wasn’t like there was someone on track.
“It was a wing mirror. And if it’s something so severe, the race should be stopped, like a VSC or a safety car, then cleared, then continued. Double yellow is be prepared to stop.
“No one’s prepared to stop when you’re going 300 kph, not one driver on the grid is prepared to stop. I think there’s something completely separate to actually what happened? I didn’t see the yellow flag, and I got the penalty, and I paid the price.
“But I think everyone can agree that what it was is severe for what you see, and what the actual danger was. But the rule is the rule.”
Norris denied that there’s any extra pressure on McLaren this weekend
“There’s a lot of external pressure, but I think within the team, not a lot changes. There’s been pressure the whole season to perform and to do well, there’s been pressure the whole season for me as a driver, to perform well, especially the second half of the year.
“I feel like I’ve been doing that, but it’s more external pressure that I think people have to deal with.
“And that’s engineers, mechanics and things like that. I’m sure everyone within the team feels a little bit more nervous coming into the final race, but at the same time, nothing should change.
“Nothing needs to change. The job we’ve been doing is very good. I’m proud of the whole team, and we just continue doing the same as what we have been doing.”
Adam Cooper F1 