Lando Norris admits he ‘messed up’ after Lewis Hamilton remarks

Lando Norris endured a miserable Sunday at the Spanish Grand Prix despite having been set for a promising afternoon, after qualifying third at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Saturday.



Norris was exceptional on Saturday and was an outside contender for a podium, something he hasn’t claimed since last season’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.



His hopes of a points finish though, let alone a rostrum, disintegrated on the opening lap.



The McLaren driver was forced to pit for a new front wing at the end of the first lap following contact with Lewis Hamilton at Turn 2, in what was nothing more than a racing incident.







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Norris accidentally clipped Hamilton’s left-rear tyre resulting in the damage; however, Hamilton somehow escaped scot-free.



The early pit-stop demoted Norris to last, ruling out a podium or a points finish.



He ultimately struggled for pace and could only salvage 17th, cementing what was an afternoon to forget for the 23-year-old.



Norris did take responsibility for the “slight misjudgement” and apologised after the race, despite the fact it was a racing incident.



“Difficult day for us today,” Norris said in a video shared by the team’s social media page.



“Obviously I messed things up with the incident in lap one.



“I just touched the back of Lewis’ tyre and it just took off a bit of my front wing and gave me some damage. So that kind of took me out the race very early on.



“Just a slight misjudgement, but also just a little bit unlucky at the same time, so apologies for that.



“The rest of it [the race] was just tough, to catch up all of that lost time was difficult. If you push too much here [at Barcelona], you find a lot of other consequences.



“It’s not as easy as just pushing to make up for lost time. The more you push, the more degradation you have, so it’s quite a fine battle.



“But we did our best, we gained a few positions, we made some progress [but] we were just too far out of it to make up for the mistake.




Mason Mount’s brilliant response to #ManUtd move at #SpanishGP https://t.co/pqs2lFL8QD — Formula1News.co.uk (@Formula1newsUK) June 4, 2023




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“The car was very good yesterday [in qualifying],” Norris noted.



“P3 was mega, but then kind of like the opposite today, so we’re going to look into it to try and understand why we were as good as we were yesterday, because that was the outlier – today wasn’t the outlier.



“Today was kind of how we’ve been this year. But we’ll keep working hard. I’m in the factory for the next few days to try and understand everything.”
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