Lando Norris reveals the ‘stupid’ mistake he made in McLaren team orders row

Lando Norris has admitted he was “stupid” not to let Oscar Piastri past earlier in the McLaren team orders row at the Hungarian Grand Prix as it would have allowed  him to challenge his team-mate for the win.

McLaren claimed a rare one-two finish in Budapest last weekend, with Piastri leading Norris home to collect his maiden F1 victory.

Lando Norris details big regret from McLaren team orders affair

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

However, the landmark result was overshadowed by a team orders row, triggered by McLaren’s decision to pit Norris first during the final round of stops, which saw him leapfrog his team-mate.

Despite the pleas of his race engineer over team radio, Norris flirted with refusing to return the position to Piastri for several laps before following McLaren’s instructions in the closing stages. Norris later insisted that he had always intended to give the lead back to Piastri.

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, Norris revealed that his biggest mistake was not letting Piastri pass him earlier in the proceedings.

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With the McLaren drivers free to race in Budapest, that would have allowed Norris to challenge his team-mate for the win on merit.

Asked if he would have done anything differently now, Norris replied: “Just let him pass straight away. It’s such a stupid thing that I didn’t, because we were free to race.

“I could have just let him pass and still tried to overtake and to race. It sounds so simple now, but it’s not something that went through my head at the time. Such a simple thing like that I could have done.

“I was just in a good rhythm and things were going well at the time. I questioned it a few times, I questioned the team a few times. I knew from as soon as they boxed me before him that I was going to have to let him go. It was a bit silly to not let him go earlier.”

Asked how many times he has replayed the race in his head since Sunday, he said: “Once. I don’t need to overthink it or overcomplicate it.

“[It was] a couple of very simple things, I feel like it’s turned into a much bigger deal than it needs to be.

“It was always clear, I was always knew that I had to let him go.

“But the longer I waited – just because it didn’t matter if I let him go straight away or at the end necessarily – the more people questioned whether I would have done it or not.

“I think that’s the main feeling. A lot of people think that I wouldn’t have done, but I knew I had to so it made no difference.

“But I don’t need it replayed. I just know that I should have let him past earlier, then I still could have had a chance to try and win the race myself. That’s what I should have done.

“If I thought of that at the time, 100 per cent [I would have done it]. I didn’t think of that for whatever reason, so I just probably wasn’t thinking of the right things at the time.

“There was no ‘no’. As soon as they basically said ‘let him pass now’, I let him pass straight away.

“There was never a factor of ignoring, not listening all these types of things.

“It was always clear what I wanted to do and needed to do, but I just let it go on for a little bit too long.”

Norris admitted that he was “not too proud” that his actions had overshadowed both Piastri’s first win and only McLaren’s second one-two result since the 2010 season.

He said: “Could it have been handled slightly differently from both a team side and from a personal side? Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

“And I think we wouldn’t be having this conversation now in some ways.

“But if people on the outside want to come up with their own stories of what happened and what I would have done and wouldn’t have done, I don’t mind about that, but it’s the things that I could have done.

“The fact that I kind of clouded over Oscar’s race win, his first race win in Formula 1, is something I’ve not felt too proud about.

“The fact that we had a one-two and that was barely a headline after the race, the fact that we had a one-two and nothing was really spoken about it from that side, I felt worse about.

“But apart from that, we discussed it, we spoke about it. Both sides things could have done things a little bit better and a little bit differently.

“It’s not good that we had it, it’s not a good moment that we had it. But we’ve learned from it and hopefully we’ll do better next time.”

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