Lando Norris regrets that the team orders controversy he instigated at the Hungarian Grand Prix overshadowed Oscar Piastri’s maiden win and McLaren’s first one-two finish in almost three years.
McLaren had last week’s race in Budapest under total control, but a team decision to pit second-placed Norris ahead of leader Piastri at the final stop to neutralise a possible threat from Lewis Hamilton in third had the incidental effect of reversing their positions.
The team planned to have its two drivers switch back to maintain fairness, but Norris ignored the instruction for almost 20 laps, instead putting his foot down to put as much distance between himself and his teammate as possible.
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It took until the third-last lap for the pleas of his race engineer, Will Joseph, to cut through to him. He decelerated theatrically on the front straight to allow Piastri to breeze past, and he followed the Australian home from there.
His recalcitrance ensured the team orders fracas was the biggest talking point of the grand prix, overshadowing both the team’s result and Piastri’s breakthrough victory.
Having had time to reflect away from the circuit, Norris told reported four days later in Spa-Francorchamps that he regretted his antics had set the narrative.
“Whether people on the outside come up with their own stories of what happened — what I would have done and wouldn’t have done, that kind of thing — I don’t mind about that,” he said, per ESPN. “The fact that I kind of clouded over Oscar’s first race win in Formula 1 is something I’ve not felt too proud about.
“The fact we had a one-two and that was barely a headline after the race, the fact we had a one-two and nothing was really spoken about from that side, that’s the kind of thing I felt worse about.”
PIT TALK PODCAST: Oscar Piastri has become Australia’s fifth grand prix winner after leading a dominant McLaren one-two finish in Budapest, but the result was overshadowed by teammate Lando Norris threatening to pinch victory for himself in a team orders fracas.
Norris admitted that he would do things different if he were to have his time again, not least because immediate acquiescence would have given him an opportunity to make a fair pass for the lead later in the race.
“[I should have] just let him past straight away,” he said. “Such a stupid thing that I didn’t, because we’re free to race. I could have just let him past and still tried to overtake and to race him.
“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.
“But I was just in a good rhythm, and things were going well at the time. I questioned it at the time, questioned the team a few times, but I knew from as soon as they boxed me ahead of him, or before him, that I was going to have to let him go. I was a bit silly and didn’t let him go earlier.”
But the Englishman said blame didn’t belong solely to him for late-race fracas.
Hamilton was around 10 seconds behind the McLaren drivers in third when he made his early final pit stop and was unlikely to ever pose a threat.
Norris stopped five laps later and rejoined still with more than five seconds in hand.
The team defended the super conservative strategy as avoiding putting the pit crew under unnecessary pressure to execute a fast stop, minimising the risk to the one-two result.
Norris, however, suggested the play was too safe and that pitting the drivers in order would have avoided the entire situation with little increased risk.
“Could it have been handled slightly differently from both a team side and a personal side? Yes. Yeah, absolutely, and I think we wouldn’t be having this conversation now in some ways,” he said.
“We discussed it, we’ve spoken about it, both sides could have done things a bit better and a little bit differently.
“It’s almost not good that we had it, but a good moment that we’ve had it, we’ve learned from it, and hopefully it’s done better next time.”
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Piastri brushed off the controversy, defending his team’s relative inexperience battling at the front and managing dominant positions.
“It’s a difficult situation to be in from a lot of sides,” he said. “I think the team really wanted to make sure we locked down a one-two and I think at the time it was a very sensible call.
“Of course it swapped the order round, and I completely get why Lando wanted to ask so many questions about swapping back. He’s leading a race and we all want to win, so I get it from both sides.
“But [it’s] just a new situation that we were maybe a bit inexperienced in handling.
“We’ve definitely spoken about it and we’re all good.”