In Friday’s rainy qualifying session, Norris did really well and started the sprint race from the front. But things didn’t go smoothly for him at Turn 1 of the sprint race when he got into a side-by-side fight with Lewis Hamilton.
He lost some ground and ended up on the dirt outside the first corner. Because of this, he lost control of his car and slipped down the rankings.
Even though he managed to finish sixth in the end, Norris thought he could have done better. After the race, he said over the team radio, “Yeah, I messed up Turn 1, my bad. I just completely lost the car, so apologize. Should have scored some more points than that.”
But Andrea Stella, the boss at McLaren, said Norris didn’t need to apologize. Instead, Stella said the team should apologize to Norris for not giving him a better car.
Stella told Sky F1, “Certainly he doesn’t need to apologize because we need his apologies [for the car]. He knows that he could have done better, but we appreciate the maximum effort and we work as a team. And also this just gives a sense of the kind of person he is.”
Norris felt that if he hadn’t struggled at the first corner, he might have had a chance to fight Hamilton for the lead. But he didn’t think he could have beaten Max Verstappen, who eventually won the race.
“Yeah, no chance,” Norris said. “Maybe it could have been one or two positions higher. But that was it.” He added that their car’s pace during the race wasn’t as good as they hoped it would be.
