Lando Norris admitted he considered disobeying the team orders to surrender the lead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, to allow his McLaren Âteammate, Oscar Piastri, to take Âvictory, desÂcribing his thought process in the closing stages as he engaged in a tense standoff with his team as âpretty crazyâ.
Norris had been told by McLaren to hand back the lead he had gained through a pit-stop strategy decision from Piastri, who had led almost the entire race. However, for the final 17 laps Norris vehemently resisted the repeated and increasingly frenetic calls to concede the position, before finally doing so reluctantly with three laps to go.
The British driver acknowledged that it had been enormously hard to obey the team orders. âThings are always going to go through your mind because, you know, youâve got to be selfish in this sport at times,â he said. âYouâve got to think of yourself. Thatâs priority No 1, think of yourself. Iâm also a team player, so my mind was going pretty crazy at the time.â
The 24-year-old, who is second in the world championship to Red Bullâs Max Verstappen and realistically his only challenger this season, had also seriously envisaged Âignoring the entreaties of his team as he considered the title fight.
âWhen youâre thinking of the seven or six points that I give away, then ⌠it crosses your mind. So it was not easy,â he said. âItâs hard when youâre in that position to give it back because youâre there and of course that went through my mind.â
After what was a tense finale to the race where there was no indication Norris would concede, he did pull over and insisted he had always planned to comply. ÂHaving done so, however, maintained the team, who are on this form have a quicker car than Red Bull, needed to execute better in future with a title fight within their grasp.
âI know what Iâm going to do and what Iâm not going to do. Of course, Iâm going to just question it and challenge it and thatâs what I did,â he said.
âI was put in this situation and itâs not my fault that I was leading the race in a way. The team should have just boxed Oscar first and we wouldnât even be having this discussion. As a team, maybe we could have done things slightly differently.â