{"id":891865,"date":"2026-09-14T16:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T16:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/891865\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T16:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T16:24:14","slug":"guenther-steiner-criticises-lando-norriss-coca-cola-spanish-gp-moment-as-unprofessional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/891865\/","title":{"rendered":"Guenther Steiner criticises Lando Norris&#8217;s Coca-Cola Spanish GP moment as &#8216;unprofessional&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Haas Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner has criticised Lando Norris&#8217;s Coca-Cola cooldown room moment following the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid, claiming it was unprofessional of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/mclaren\/10\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">McLaren<\/a> driver.<\/p>\n<p>After finishing third at the Madring circuit,\u00a0Norris was seen drinking a Coca-Cola in the cooldown room. With rival drinks company PepsiCo having a partnership with F1, an official asked the 2025 champion to put the drink down. He firmly responded: &#8220;I just did a race, so I&#8217;m allowed to drink what I would like. Thank you so much.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The moment quickly became a talking point online, with many fans praising Norris. But Steiner argued during <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/W5pcopodItM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-custom-text=\"1\">The Red Flags Podcast<\/a> that he shouldn&#8217;t have done it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you are a professional, you don&#8217;t do that. End of story,&#8221; the former team chief said. &#8220;You know what you can do and what you cannot do. You&#8217;re well trained. He shouldn&#8217;t have done it. Is it a bad thing that he did it? Will somebody get hurt? No. But as a pro, you shouldn&#8217;t do it. But he has done it. And you know what? I couldn&#8217;t give a s***.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789403054_622_lando-norris-mclaren.jpg\" alt=\"Lando Norris, McLaren\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" loading=\"lazy\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">Lando Norris, McLaren<\/p>\n<p class=\"photographer\">Photo by: Federico Basile<\/p>\n<p>Steiner added when asked if it was because of Pepsi&#8217;s partnership with F1: &#8220;It&#8217;s all going by categories. They sell it and obviously if you don&#8217;t pay, you cannot have it. And he had a Coke. It was not the smartest thing to do.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But as I said, I don&#8217;t care because now, for Coca-Cola, it worked out pretty good. It was pretty good for [Coca-Cola]. If they wouldn&#8217;t have said anything, nobody would have even noticed, but because it was so bumped up now it&#8217;s a thing, and now Coca-Cola is laughing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Norris finished the race in third after starting from pole position and losing the lead during an ill-timed virtual safety car. He currently sits fourth in the drivers&#8217; standings with 186 points, 106 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli.<\/p>\n<p>            We want your opinion!<\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-auto\">What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"#\" class=\"ms-link text-link font-bold\">Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-1 text-body\">&#8211; The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Haas Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner has criticised Lando Norris&#8217;s Coca-Cola cooldown room moment following the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,461531,1737,254733,913,254732,85,1511],"class_list":["post-891865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-guenther-steiner-criticises-lando-norriss-coca-cola-spanish-gp-moment-as-unprofessional","tag-lando-norris","tag-madring","tag-mclaren","tag-spanish-gp","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}