11/07/2024
NEWS STORY
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have both criticised their team's strategy at Silverstone, the Briton feeling that victory was "thrown away", the Australian ruing the failure to double-stack.
In the rain, Norris was leading but once the switch was made back to slicks the Briton was given a stark choice after Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen had pitted. Either he could switch to softs in order to cover the Mercedes driver, or mediums to cover the Red Bull.
"Hamilton...." he replied "I think Hamilton... or do you think medium? I don't mind."
The team opted for softs in order to cover Hamilton, but a slow stop saw him emerge behind the Mercedes, while 8 laps later he was passed by Verstappen.
"So many things were going well, and we threw it away in the final stop," said Norris at race end. "It was one lap, but also I don't think it was the lap," he added. "I think even if I boxed on the perfect lap, our decision to go onto the soft was the wrong one, and I think Lewis still would have won no matter what. Two calls from our side cost us everything today so, especially here, it's pretty disappointing.
"We are not making the right decisions," he continued, "but at the same time I blame myself today for not making some of the right decisions. I hate it. I hate ending in this position and having excuses for not doing a good enough job."
Teammate Piastri feels that in his case the team screwed up earlier in the race when the rain began to fall more heavily. While Mercedes went for a double-stack, McLaren called race leader Norris in on Lap 27, opting to leave his Australian out for another costly lap even though he was running second to his teammate, just 0.6s behind.
Although the youngster inherited the lead, it was short lived for when he did pit (on Lap 28) he rejoined in sixth behind Carlos Sainz.
"To be honest, that decision in the race is probably the hardest call you're ever going to have in motor racing," said the Australian. "You've got two cars, one-two, separated by half a second with rain coming down. I don't think it gets any harder than that.
"Clearly some things we need to review," he admitted. "I think double stacking would have been the better call, but hindsight's a wonderful thing.
"We just need to see if we had any information that told us that was going to be a better choice, but yeah, obviously a little bit painful given the gap to Lewis.
"I knew if I got in front then it would be my priority as we go into the pits," he added "That's why I say it's one of the hardest decisions, because I'm trying to get the lead, give myself a priority, the team don't know which car is going to come in first to the pits. Yeah, it's just incredibly tough."
"The last couple of corners were very, very tough," he said of that 'extra' lap as conditions worsened. "I could see on my dash that Lando was like five seconds behind me when I pitted, so I knew I was in a lot of trouble then.
"But yeah, I knew it was the wrong call basically instantly. Obviously frustrated at that point, but I knew that there was rain still coming.
"After the first couple of laps I could see that the cars ahead had clearly used up their inters a lot in the first couple of laps, so I was actually optimistic at that point, but then I kind of hit the same wall as everyone else. I knew we would have more chances later in the race with getting back onto the slicks, the choice of tyres we had, so I knew there would be more opportunities. I just tried to give ourselves the best chance of still trying to win."
Asked about the failure to double-stack, he said: "I think we just need to review if we put enough weight on that decision. Obviously when the two cars are so close like that, you lose a lot of time doing a double stack.
"The conditions were getting trickier, but it was very, very hard to judge. It was only really half of the track that was really difficult until the lap that I stayed out, and then the whole track became difficult. Just very, very difficult for everybody involved, but yes, I think in hindsight double-stacking would have given us a very good chance of winning.
"Every other decision we absolutely nailed in that race," said the Australian of his team's overall strategy. "I think me and Lando put ourselves in a great position getting to the lead. The decision on my side to put a medium on was the right call. I think we were the quickest at the end. It's just a shame that we weren't in a better position in the middle of the race."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Silverstone here.