Do you remember the worst-ever finish for Woking outfit McLaren? You don’t have to go too far to answer that question. A double DNF for the team and a double lapping of Lando Norris by Max Verstappen sealed the nightmare of a curtain-raiser for the Papaya team. And the horror show for the veteran 23-year-0ld has seemed to have been carried over to Jeddah as the man is set to start from P19 at the main race. But another incident from the qualifying involving him and Verstappen made the Briton’s blood boil.
Lando Norris was on a hot lap when he encountered the Dutchman going very slow on the tight Jeddah Corniche Circuit and was extremely shocked to see the irresponsibility of Red Bull. The Brit immediately called out the danger of the circumstance, which could have caused a massive incident. The reigning double world champion was also surprised that he wasn’t informed by his engineers about the same as the drivers massively reply to their radio updates for such information.
As quoted by Express.co.uk, “It’s dangerous what these guys are doing,” the McLaren driver exclaimed after the near-miss. “They need to use the radio or something. That could have been a massive crash.”
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While it was a threatening incident that was avoided, something that couldn’t be avoided was Lando Norris’s continuation of the nightmares.
Lando Norris accepted the “silly mistake” he made during the qualifying
“The car has better pace I would say that we had in Bahrain, so I want to be a little bit more hopeful,” said Norris. But McLaren’s nightmares have put him at P19 on the starting grid of the race. While his teammate made it to the Q3, his separation, and a silly mistake, made him lose out on that opportunity.
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As quoted by Plante F1, he said, “It was a silly mistake I shouldn’t make, to be honest with you, paid the price very quickly, so frustrated. I probably should have easily been into Q2, potentially Q3 and I let the team down today, so I’m annoyed.”
Asked if he sustained damage during that smack of the wall, Norris replied: “I damaged the steering, so yeah, enough.”
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What are your predictions for Lando Norris for the Saudi Arabian GP? Let us know in the comments below.