Lando Norris admits he is still to find the right balance between being fair and being aggressive in on-track battles.
Incidents between Norris and Max Verstappen at multiple races this season have come under scrutiny, with the Dutchman often getting the upper hand in close wheel-to-wheel combat. While Norris benefitted from Verstappen being penalized twice in Mexico City, he admits he already had to change his approach based on his own penalty a week earlier at Circuit of the Americas.
“I’ve always fought fairly,” Norris said. “That’s who I am. That’s who I am as a racer. That’s my way of driving every day. Maybe sometimes I’ve lost out because I’ve been too fair and not aggressive enough. And that’s where I have to find a better balance.
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“Those are the things, the changes I’ve said I’ve had to change since last weekend and over the course of this year, that when you’re racing these top guys, you learn things and you have to understand better these balances of attacking, defending, risk management, aggression, all of those types of things.
“But for me, I don’t need to worry about them. It’s got nothing to do with me, in a way. I mean, I’ll do what I can. I’ll race fairly. If he doesn’t, then things will go like they did [in Mexico]. But I think he wants to race fairly. I hope he does. I think he enjoys those moments, too, when it’s a fair battle, but all I can do is keep doing what I’m doing. I feel like I’m doing a good job and we’ll see what happens.”
Norris also says his opinion of what is fair and isn’t has evolved during this season, following a collision with Verstappen in Austria that resulted in the championship leader also being handed a 10-second time penalty.
“Austria, no one should have got a penalty, I don’t think. Maybe some of my views are a little bit different now than what they were back then. Austria, I don’t think anyone should have got a penalty. Austin, I don’t think anyone should have got a penalty. Let’s say we both kind of did things wrong.
“I feel like I was made to do something wrong, and … the majority of people, the majority of drivers feel like that was the same thing. That’s why you’ve heard of some of the rule changes that might be coming and those types of things. It’s because there’s a common consensus that it wasn’t correct what happened in the result that I had last weekend.
“(In Mexico), I think, was another level on both of those cases. I was ahead of Max in the braking zone, past the apex. I am avoiding crashing. This is the difference. I can’t speak for him, and maybe he’ll say something different.
“But I think it was a step too far from both of those, and it was clear that the stewards agreed with that. So I don’t see it as a win or anything like this, but it’s more that I hope Max acknowledges that he took it a step too far.”