Verstappen won in Qatar<\/a> to close the gap to Norris to 12 points in the drivers\u2019 standings.<\/p>\nAlthough Norris never looked in contention for victory in Qatar, his teammate Oscar Piastri lost out on a clear opportunity to win after McLaren opted not to pit its cars under a safety car on Lap 7 while the rest of the field did.<\/p>\n
The decision ultimately led to Piastri finishing second and Norris fourth, meaning Piastri is now third in the standings — four points behind Verstappen and 16 points behind his McLaren teammate.<\/p>\n
Asked how he would now approach Abu Dhabi now that Verstappen is his biggest threat, Norris said: \u201cThe same as every weekend. I try and beat them, they try and beat me.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing different … I just want to go to bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
A podium finish in Abu Dhabi would still guarantee the title for Norris, and the McLaren driver said he would focus on continuing his run of good form, which saw him take recent victories in Mexico and Brazil.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it\u2019s not our greatest day, not our greatest weekend,\u201d Norris said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know if anyone saw the run of results I had before that, were great. So I put myself in this position [at the top of the championship].<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still happy. It wasn\u2019t our finest day, it wasn\u2019t my finest weekend in terms of driving and putting things together. But that\u2019s life. Everyone has bad weekends.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take it on the chin, we\u2019ll take it on the chin, and we\u2019ll see what we can do next weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris said he simply wanted to \u201cgo to bed\u201d after a McLaren strategy blunder at the Qatar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,86971,576,577,132995,82],"class_list":["post-316950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-f1-sports-auto-racing-league-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lando-norris-sports-auto-racing-player-player-statscom-1135155","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316950","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=316950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}