{"id":159895,"date":"2025-09-21T19:44:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T19:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/159895\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T19:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T19:44:07","slug":"lando-norris-defiant-after-failing-to-take-advantage-of-piastris-azerbaijan-crash-formula-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/159895\/","title":{"rendered":"Lando Norris defiant after failing to take advantage of Piastri\u2019s Azerbaijan crash | Formula One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lando Norris dismissed suggestions he should have taken greater advantage of a chance to narrow the gap to his title rival Oscar Piastri<\/a> after the Australian crashed out of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with the British driver insisting he did not care how his performance was evaluated.<\/p>\n

The race was won by Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen but behind him Piastri crashed on the opening lap<\/a>. Norris, who trailed his McLaren teammate by 31 points going into the meeting, started in seventh but finished only in the same position, taking just six points from Piastri.<\/p>\n

Norris rubbished accusations that he had missed his chance to put a major points swing on his competitor. \u201cI\u2019m doing the best I can in every race,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery race I finished second or worse this year was an opportunity lost. I don\u2019t really care how people look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He suffered in qualifying with a scruffy lap that included brushing the wall, while his team put him out too early with the track grip still evolving, and maintained that with overtaking hard in Baku, his race chances had been scuppered on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I wanted more, so it was not a good result,\u201d Norris said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t do anything more. It was lost yesterday. It\u2019s just impossible to overtake. So I look back to yesterday more than anything today.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the race Norris became embroiled in a series of DRS trains from which he could not escape, compounded by a slow pit stop from McLaren<\/a> \u2013 the team\u2019s second for Norris in two races \u2013 without which he might have made up at least two more places. He felt he had exacted all he could in difficult circumstances. \u201cI could have ended up in the wall and gone long and something worse happened. I felt like I was close to maximising today,\u201d he said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t maybe look like it from the outside but we struggled with the pace. It\u2019s just too difficult to overtake.<\/p>\n

Lando Norris leaves the pits. His stop took too long for the second race running. Photograph: Lisi Niesner\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m doing the best I can. I know I\u2019ve still got a lot of points to make up against a pretty good driver, an incredible driver. I just need to keep my head down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mercedes driver George Russell<\/a> was happy just to get the race over with, after he claimed an impressive second place despite enduring an illness all weekend. \u201cI was pretty glad when I saw the chequered flag, to be honest,\u201d he said. \u201cI was fortunate, I felt much better today than I felt on Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately, it was Baku. Even though it\u2019s one of the toughest circuits, mentally and physically it\u2019s maybe one of the easiest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, said the team had been considering replacing Russell with the reserve driver Valtteri Bottas earlier in the weekend and praised the British driver for sticking at his task.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Friday, it was touch and go,\u201d Wolff said. \u201cIn the morning, he himself said: \u2018I\u2019m not sure I can make it.\u2019 Then somehow he recovered but overnight it got worse, every single day. So I think it was a big push for him to even drive, and then to perform like this is mega.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing a one-and-a-half-hour race here in Baku, not putting a single foot wrong. That was a super-merited P2.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris dismissed suggestions he should have taken greater advantage of a chance to narrow the gap to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-159895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}