Lando Norris has been left seething in the wake of McLaren’s nightmare outing at the Dutch Grand Prix.
The British driver enjoyed a stellar weekend around the Zandvoort track and started the race from second on the grid.
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As soon as the race got underway however the McLaren star and his teammate, Aussie Oscar Piastri, suffered thanks to a costly tactical decision.
The heavens opened up as the grid made their way around the track on the opening lap and as the rain got heavier, almost every team elected to pit and move off the soft tyres in favour of the intermediate tyres.
McLaren decided to stay out and push on for longer with the soft compound.
The decision backfired almost instantly and left Norris and Piastri stranded towards the back of the grid and fighting to claw their way back into the points.
After the race the British star voiced his displeasure with the strategical blunder and called for a review into what had happened.
“Not too satisfied (with the result). The second half of the race was good. I think we did everything we could, we undercut a few cars and we had a relatively decent race,” Norris told Sky Sports after the race.
“But we just lost everything in the beginning with the decision to stay out on the slicks when it was too wet. We just lost a lot more than we ever should have done.
“So that was pretty much, not game over, but just that threw everything away that we worked hard for yesterday, so a bit frustrating from that side.
“But we fought back well, just we didn’t have the best of race cars today, it was too tricky in dirty air.
“We struggled too much in the middle sector and therefore we couldn’t fight, I couldn’t get past (Yuki) Tsunoda and like (Lewis) Hamilton could just do one lap and get past everyone.
“So plenty of things to work on, but like we said our weaknesses yesterday carried over a lot to today and things to work on from our side.”
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Norris said the information that was being dispatched by the team and the decisions that were made needed to be reviewed.
“It was just different information and nothing was just clear enough, something for us to review let’s say,” Norris said.
“After the first lap when I was second and I got overtaken so easily by (Sergio) Perez, I was surprised we stayed out in the first place.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the team took too long before they elected to call Norris into the pits.
“After a busy race, with changing weather conditions, we finish P7 and P9, scoring some important points. But the reality is we could have got more today as we missed a couple of opportunities,” Stella said.
“With Lando, we hesitated too much at the start of the race before pitting for intermediate tyres.
“On Oscar’s side we opted to stay out through the rain on dry tyres, where he did an excellent job. From there his race was unfolding well, but unfortunately he locked the front tyres, needed to pit and we lost the advantage gained.
“We don’t give up. The good news is that the car was, again, quite competitive. So we will review where we could have improved and go again in Italy.”