Lando Norris ‘driving like a muppet’ admission after US GP ‘momentum killer’

Lando Norris praised Max Verstappen for their late-race battle in Austin, and held his hands up for “driving like a muppet”.

Norris came home classified in fourth place, behind Max Verstappen, after he was given a five-second time penalty in the closing stages of the United States Grand Prix.

Lando Norris: Max Verstappen ‘drove very well’

The two championship protagonists met on track in the second half of the race, with McLaren having given Norris a six-lap tyre advantage delta through the pit-stop sequence.

It was a battle that stemmed back to the start of the race as Verstappen dived up the inside of Norris into Turn 1 after the McLaren driver left the door open, with both running wide into the escape area to release Leclerc into the lead.

While Ferrari led out front with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz in first and second after the stops, the battle between third-placed Verstappen and the attacking Norris proved the highlight of the race as the pair duelled, lap after lap.

A thrilling nail-biter of a battle came to a damp squib ending as Norris attacked Verstappen into Turn 12, with the Red Bull driver sticking to the inside line in defence and running out wide to push Norris out with him. Norris kept the boot in and overtook Verstappen off-track and was given a five-second time penalty, dropping him behind Verstappen by a second at the chequered flag.

“I think Max drove very well,” Norris said after the Grand Prix, reliving the difficulty of their relentless fight.

“It’s very hard to do what we’re doing, and it’s hard when you’re side by side, you’re completely on the wrong side of the track to guess what your braking marker is.

“You’re going quicker than you have before because you used the battery, and the tyres are older. There are different bumps. There’s a lot of dirt. We’re battling, and we’re fighting hard, so I respect the battle that we had. It was a good one. It was enjoyable.”

While the ending was controversial to the point of McLaren team boss Andrea Stella dubbing the stewards’ involvement as “inappropriate”, Norris was less critical and said he felt the battle had been decided by himself not doing as good a job as Verstappen.

“I think it was respectful,” he said.

“Turn 1, I didn’t do the correct thing, but I feel like what happened at the end of the race was more on my side but, otherwise, it was a good battle, and I enjoyed it. We just didn’t come out on top because I didn’t do a good enough job.

“If I defended better in Turn 1 and wasn’t driving like a muppet. I should have led after Turn 1 and we shouldn’t have this conversation in the first place.”

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Having been beaten by Verstappen in both the Sprint race and the Grand Prix, Norris’ deficit to the reigning World Champion has grown to 57 points with five weekends to go, and the championship hopeful admitted it has thrown a spanner in the works for his title hopes.

“It is quite a bit of a momentum killer but we kind of came here with our minds open, not expecting to dominate or just win or anything,” he said.

“The fact that Ferrari was so quick today showed they’re just as competitive. Even if I came around Turn 1 in first, I would never have finished first or second, and only could have finished third.

“But the one guy I need to beat is Max and that’s the guy I didn’t beat today.

“It was a non-successful weekend all in all, but I gave it a good shot. I tried. It wasn’t good enough, and we have work to do, and I have work to do on myself.”

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