Lando Norris says he has no complaints about the severity of his penalty for not slowing for yellow flags in the Qatar Grand Prix and apologized to McLaren for costing the team points.
The stewards gave Norris a 10s stop-and-go penalty for failing to slow for yellow flags during the first half of the race when a wing mirror was sitting on the pit straight. On the lap in question, Norris gained more than half a second on the cars around him — setting a personal best — in the first sector, and he says he was unaware of the yellow flag but did not dispute the penalty.
“Disappointed, of course. I let the team down,” Norris said. “The team gave me a great car today. Easily the quickest out there and I [expletive] it up.
“I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m not an idiot — if there’s a yellow flag I know I need to slow down, that’s rule number one. [And] don’t go past people. For some reason I didn’t do that today, because I’ve not seen it or I’ve missed it or something.
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“I have to take it on the chin. If they think I’ve done something wrong, I must have done something wrong. I can only apologize for the rest of the year to the team.
“I didn’t give up until the end. I did [the] best I could. I’m disappointed — two points for the quickest car I’ve ever seen.”
When it was put to Norris that some commenters had been surprised at the scale of penalty, he was dismissive of any complaints.
“It’s fine,” he said. “If I did what they said I did wrong, then good on them for giving me the quick penalty.”
Norris says he will have to make sure he doesn’t make any further mistakes in Abu Dhabi next weekend to give the team the best chance possible to secure the constructors’ championship.
“The team gave me the best car out there today,” he said. “I’m very happy and thankful for them to do so. I got a good start, I got past George [Russell]. I thought George would be our biggest competitor today and that wasn’t the case; Max was, and he did an incredible job.
“We go in the same as every weekend, wanting to win, wanting to be the best, wanting to be the fastest. I just need to not be an idiot and do what I did.”