Norris reveals the radio message which triggered his decision to let Piastri past · RaceFans

McLaren pleaded with Lando Norris for 20 laps to let his team mate Oscar Piastri into the lead of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

His race engineer Will Joseph made appeal after appeal to Norris, who appeared reluctant to give up his shot at victory and lose seven precious points in his pursuit of championship leader Max Verstappen.

At first he told Norris the team wanted to “re-establish the order at your convenience.” However they had also told Piastri he needed to get within range of Norris before they swapped the order.

The team were concerned how hard Norris was pushing and in a series of messages urged him to moderate his pace. These went unanswered for so long Joseph decided to check his driver could actually hear him.

“Lando, radio check please,” he said. “Yes, loud and clear,” Norris replied. “Okay, save the tyres in turn four and 11 then please,” answered Joseph.

But still Norris refused to back off, maintaining his gap over Piastri at three-and-a-half seconds. “We need you to save more tyres please and we do want to let Oscar through,” Joseph reminded him. “We should have boxed him first, then, surely?” replied Norris. Told that “doesn’t matter,” Norris answered: “I mean, it does. For me, maybe.”

Joseph continued to bombard Norris over the following laps. “Lando we still think you’re using the tyres too much turn four, turn 11, and the rears at exit turn six, turn nine,” he said. “Oscar’s 3.5. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

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He tried telling Norris their tyre expert Hiroshi Imai was “stressed about the tyre use”. He drilled home the message about saving the tyres at “turn four, turn 11” over and over. “It’s going to get boring,” Joseph added.

McLaren were clearly seriously concerned Norris was not going to let Piastri by. “Just remember every single Sunday morning meeting we have,” Joseph said. “Tell him to catch up then,” Norris answered.

“Lando there are five laps to go,” Joseph urged as they neared the chequered flag. “The way to win a championship is not by yourself. It’s with the team. You’re going to need Oscar and you’re going to need the team.”

But after the race Norris said he never intended to deny Piastri victory. He only intended to wait until the last moment, and said he didn’t need to give the team any indication what he had planned.

“I know what I’m going to do and what I’m not going to do,” he said afterwards. “Of course I’m going to question it and challenge it, and that’s what I did.

“I was going to wait until the last lap, the last corner. But then they said if there was a Safety Car all of a sudden, and I couldn’t let Oscar go through, then it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot. Then I was like, ‘yeah, it’s a fair point’, and I let him go with two [laps] to go or something.”

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Norris denied he had been persuaded to give up the place to Piastri, and insisted he always planned to swap. “You can make what you will of what you hear and what you think you know and that kind of stuff but I know that I always was going to give it back unless they changed their mind on what they were saying. And they didn’t, so all good.”

However Norris admitted he thought about how valuable the seven points he lost could prove if he continues to take points off Verstappen over the rest of the season.

“Things are always going to go through your mind because you’ve got to be selfish in this sport at times. You’ve got to think of yourself. That’s priority number one, think of yourself.

“I’m also a team player, so my mind was going pretty crazy at the time. I know what we’ve done in the past between Oscar and myself. He’s helped me plenty of times.

“I think this is a different situation. This is not someone helping one another. I was put into a position, and we were undoing that position change. But I get it, and I know a lot of people are going to say the gap between me and Max is pretty big – 60, 70, 80 points or something. [But] if Red Bull and Max make the mistakes like they did today and continue to do that, and as a team we continue to improve and have weekends like we’ve had this weekend, we can turn it around.

“It’s still optimistic. It’s still a big goal to say, yeah, we can close 70 points and as a driver, I can close 70 points in half a season. And then when you’re thinking of the seven or six points that I give away, then it crosses your mind, for sure. So it was not easy, but I also understood the situation I was in and I was quite confident always by the last lap I would have done it.”

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