Norris: "Mind going crazy" over championship amid team orders

Budapest, Hungary -- Lando Norris admitted his mind was "going pretty crazy" over championship implications as McLaren urged him to slow down and let teammate Oscar Piastri clinch the Hungarian Grand Prix victory.

Norris gained track position over Piastri with a strategic undercut, pitting for fresh tires two laps earlier during the latter stages of the race. Initially, it appeared Norris might ignore team orders to relinquish the lead, but with two laps remaining, he relented, allowing Piastri to secure his first F1 win.

"I was going to wait until the last lap, the last corner," Norris revealed. "But then they [McLaren] said if there was a safety car all of a sudden, and I couldn't let Oscar go through, then it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot. Then I was like, 'yeah, it's a fair point'. And I let him go."

Reflecting on his poor start, Norris conceded, "I didn't deserve to win the race today. Simple as that. So the fact I was in that position was incorrect. I shouldn't have been in that position in the first place. I shouldn't have been given that hope of 'I'm here, I'm leading a race'."

Finishing second allowed Norris to narrow Max Verstappen's championship lead to 76 points. Had he maintained the lead, the gap would have been reduced to 70 points, a factor Norris admitted played on his mind in the closing laps.

"These things are always going to go through your mind," Norris explained. "You've got to be selfish in this sport at times. You've got to think of yourself, that's priority number one -- think of yourself. I'm also a team player. My mind was going pretty crazy at the time."

Norris acknowledged the balance between personal ambition and team strategy: "I know what we've done in the past between Oscar and myself, he's helped me plenty of times, and I think this is a different situation. This is not someone helping one another. I was put into a position, and we were undoing that position change."

Despite the considerable gap to Verstappen, Norris remains optimistic about his championship prospects. "But I mean I'm also -- and I know a lot of people are going to say, the gap between me and Max is pretty big, 60, 70, 80 points or something -- but if Red Bull and Max make the mistakes like they did today, and continue to do that, and as a team we continue to improve and have weekends like we've had this weekend, we can turn it around."

"It's still optimistic. It's still a big goal to say we can close 70 points, as a driver I can close 70 points in half a season. When you're thinking of the seven or six points that I give away, it crosses your mind, for sure. So, it was not easy. But I also understood the situation I was in, and I was quite confident always by the last lap I would have done it."

Verstappen, who faced a challenging weekend, finished fifth after a late collision with Lewis Hamilton, adding further intrigue to the championship storyline.

Up Next