McLaren tears into ‘inappropriate’ FIA for interfering in Norris v Verstappen US GP battle

McLaren’s Andrea Stella was not impressed with the FIA stewards for awarding Lando Norris a five-second time penalty.

Norris was given a five-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining the advantage after overtaking Max Verstappen off the track in the final laps at the Circuit of the Americas.

Andrea Stella: Stewards involvement was ‘inappropriate’

While Norris’ penalty was inarguable as an overtake off track, the difficulty for the stewards was in deciding which overtake opportunities and incidents through the race warranted penalty or not, with drivers being able to crowd their rivals out due to the tarmac escape areas.

Pierre Gasly was also given a penalty for overtaking off the track, while George Russell was given a penalty for forcing another driver off the track in a similar incident to Verstappen’s incident with Norris.

On the first lap, Verstappen also crowded Norris out on the exit of Turn 1 – an incident which the stewards opted against taking any further action against.

With Norris losing out to Verstappen in the final classification as a result of the five-second penalty awarded to him for overtaking Verstappen off-track, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella was none too impressed as he spoke to Sky F1.

“My view is that the way the stewards interfered with a beautiful piece of motorsport was inappropriate, because both cars went off track, so both cars gained an advantage,” he said.

“It’s a shame because it costs us a podium.

“It cost us a race where we stayed patient after we were pushed off on the first lap at the first corner.

“We accepted it, having said very clearly our position, this kind of decision by the stewards cannot be appealed.

“For us, the chapter is now closed, and we move on to the next race.”

Asked whether the thought had crossed McLaren’s mind to instruct Norris to give back the place and attack the Dutch driver again, Stella said: “We double-checked that both cars went off track so, for us, there was no doubt that the manoeuvre was correct.”

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Lando Norris: Max Verstappen went ‘completely off the track’

Speaking to Sky F1 immediately after the race, Norris opted against digging in the boot on his championship rival but said it was clear Verstappen had both overtaken and defending by going off-track during the race.

“I need to go look at it again. I was pretty tight, obviously, Max went for a tight gap,” he said.

“From inside the car, it’s obviously hard to say on some things.

“He obviously committed quite a bit, which he’s got the right to do. But again, he went completely off the track. So I don’t know.

“I need to look back at it – [at] the same point, he’s overtaking by going off track. So I don’t know what I’ve gotta do.

“He defends by going off track. He overtakes by going off track. But I’m not gonna complain about it. I think Max drove well, he defended well, and we had a good race together. But the rules are the rules.”

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