McLaren exonerates Lando Norris’ costly mistakes in ‘difficult’ Brazil GP ruling

Andrea Stella has refuted a suggestion Lando Norris makes too many mistakes, saying the team bears some responsibility for his struggles in the wet in Brazil.

Norris finished the Brazilian Grand Prix down in sixth place as the pole-sitter was outscored by title rival Max Verstappen by 18 points on the day, dropping 62 points back with only three races remaining.

Andrea Stella: I don’t think that’s a fair statement about Lando Norris

After a run of good results in which Norris outscored Verstappen five times in the previous six races, the McLaren driver was given an open goal on Sunday when he lined up on pole position with Verstappen only 17th on the grid.

That open goal soon became an own goal.

Norris immediately lost the lead as George Russell slipped up the inside into Turn 1 with the McLaren driver blaming “wheelspin” off the line for his lack of momentum.

An unfortunately timed pit stop in which he pitted just before the Safety Car was deployed for Franco Colapinto’s crash cost him more positions to Verstappen and the two Alpines while a moment at Turn 4 meant he was again passed by George Russell before another at Turn 1 allowed Charles Leclerc through.

Norris finished sixth, half a minute down on Verstappen who came from 17th on the grid to win by 20 seconds.

“I made a couple of mistakes, which I didn’t have to, and it cost me a couple of positions in the end,” Norris admitted.

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It begs the question, which was put to McLaren team boss Stella by Sky Deutschland, does Norris make too many mistakes?

“No, I don’t think that’s a fair statement about Lando,” he said.

“First of all, I would like to acknowledge that Max is now the big favourite for the World Championship. Of course, he was the favourite before, to be honest. He’s a fantastic driver, did a fantastic job and Lando is behind him right now.

“We are proud of where we are and Lando should be very proud of his performance.

“A race like today can happen, it can happen that you have problems here and there. We will learn our lesson from this and get stronger and stronger.”

Verstappen may be the big favourite, but Stella is not ready to throw in the towel.

“The dream lives on for the season,” he insisted. “Overall we have had a great and rapid development curve. We’ll take the lesson with us. If we don’t win this year, we’ll come back even stronger next year.”

As for Norris’ two costly mistakes, Stella insists McLaren shoulder some of the blame for those as both the Briton and Oscar Piastri struggled in the wet.

“If I look at Lando himself, the main things to review are to do with his going off-track, which cost us positions, but we did struggle with both drivers, including qualifying, we did struggle with locking the tyres,” he told the media in Brazil.

“So while we talk about drivers, I think we as a team have to acknowledge that we didn’t give the drivers easy material today to handle in these difficult conditions.

“So I’m sure the drivers will say ‘I could have done better here or there’ but also we as a team have to acknowledge that our car in these conditions was difficult, tricky, and sometimes just unpredictable.”

Oscar Piastri was eighth with Red Bull outscoring McLaren in Brazil for only the second time in 11 races. McLaren lead the teams’ standings on 593 to Ferrari’s 557 with Red Bull a further 13 off the pace.

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