Piastri ‘drops ball’ but did Norris miss opportunity?

Lando Norris needed a weekend where his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri dropped the ball in order to compete for the Formula 1 World Championship.

He won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, finishing one place behind Max Verstappen, who had won his second dominant victory in a row, but only managed to recover six points from the Australian.

Was this a missed opportunity, as Norris kept being asked over the course of Saturday and Sunday in Baku, and kept denying? Or did the Briton make the most of a difficult situation?

Norris cited Saturday qualifying as the source of the issue after the race.

Because overtaking was close to impossible, he said, qualifying had dictated his race result. And he did succeed in coming back to where he started.

Both McLaren drivers struggled during the most difficult qualifying session in Formula One history, which saw a record six red flags result from a string of crashes in challenging conditions.

Piastri crashed – and ended up ninth on the grid. Norris had a good chance of qualifying, but finished only seventh.

After the final stoppage, he attributed his decision to run first to the drivers who came up behind him, who had received better conditions.

However, Norris’ pits left behind him, and Liam Lawson, Carlos Sainz, and George Russell set faster times than him in slower cars. And Norris hurt his chances by hitting the wall at Turn 15. He continued, but only after passing a short.

Was Norris asked if this was a chance that was a failure? “No”, he said, “because I still did everything I could”.

Norris had chosen that route first to reduce the chance of any additional issues. However, Andrea Stella, the team’s principal, claimed the issue wasn’t with the lap’s timing.

“We are still happy with this decision (to run first)”, Stella said a couple of hours later.

“We were aware that we might have squandered some lap time.” However, for us, making sure we could deliver a robust lap, let’s say, was what was most crucial.

” Actually, as a matter of fact, we didn’t. but for reasons that aren’t necessarily related to the track’s grip. Lando made a minor error by touching the wall.

In other words, Norris had not delivered on the potential of the car in qualifying, even allowing for slightly compromised circumstances.

Fast forward 24 hours, and Norris summed up his race this way:” I don’t really care how people look at it. Of course, today I wished I could do better. Yesterday was the day I needed to do better. But we went out first. We simply made our choice. That cost us money.

“I also could have ended up in the wall and gone long and something worse happened. Today, I feel like I was on my last breath. Perhaps it didn’t appear that way when it was outside.

” The tricky conditions, the water yesterday, the little bit of rain, going out first on track, all added up to making it a worse weekend. If I had started second, I believe I would have finished second in our current situation.

Stella and Stella both agreed that Norris’ race turned out just as well as it could have if he had started where he did.

” We did not offer Lando a car that was in condition to progress through the field, “he said”. And Lando did, in fact, have a good race.

There was not enough pace, he claimed, and he avoided trouble.

” Lando had a strong race. He pushed the car’s limits while pursuing his full potential. No other driver in Lando’s vehicle, in my opinion, could have scored more.

Although now within a race victory of Piastri, Norris accepts that the championship is still an uphill struggle.

Any assessment of Piastri’s weekend was less nuanced. As Stella put it, this Australian performance was “definitely uncharacteristic.”

This season, Piastri has been the epitome of solidity, but in Baku, it appeared as though a different driver was driving.

His practice sessions were littered with small errors. He crashed during qualifying. He started off wrong. That put him last at the first corner as the field streamed past after he had to stop again and the car went into anti-stall. After only five corners, he crashed, misinterpreting an Esteban Ocon pass attempt.

He said, “You’re never going to feel amazing after a weekend like this.” But, ultimately, I felt like the pace has still been good this weekend. And it’s unusual for me to execute so many times. I’m trying to put that behind me, so I’m very focused.

“I would be much more concerned if these errors were because I was trying to make up time or do things like that. Things that could be very, very easily fixed despite the obvious cost of the errors.

He argued that it wasn’t because the title battle was finally beginning to unfold at the conclusion of the season-long series of long-haul locations.

“If I felt like I was in a completely different headspace, then it’s kind of easier to blame it on that. Additionally, Piastri said, “A problem that needs to be fixed,”

The obvious question in the context of Norris ‘ qualifying error, and Piastri’s weekend of them, is what went wrong?

Norris thought he had a solution for that.

He claimed that the car was challenging to drive and that it occasionally had a “knider’s edge.” “Easy to either be just too slow, sometimes kind of feel like you’re there, and then mess up and then something goes wrong.

This weekend, the car didn’t give us a lot of confidence, and probably both of our performances showed that.

Stella claimed McLaren anticipated a challenging weekend in Baku.

” If you had asked me what is the most difficult weekend, I would have said it could be Baku or Las Vegas, one of the two, “he said.

We are well aware of the fact that our car can compete in long, medium-speed corners, unlike in Baku and Vegas. You have a lot of good things to say about the car’s ability to brake straight-line, but it’s not very good.

Verstappen provided a stark contrast to the McLaren drivers in Baku. He won the race, the win, and the fastest lap, and he delivered a flawless weekend.

Verstappen was 94 points adrift of Piastri at the time, but Stella had insisted on Saturday that the Dutchman was still a threat in the drivers’ championship. “Yes, in capital letters,” he said.

Now, he’s 69 behind. Verstappen still needs to earn close to 10 points per race over Piastri in order to elude him by the end of the season.

Verstappen claims he is “not thinking about it” and that it’s a “long shot” to say the least.

Stella pointed out that a new floor introduced at Monza had improved the Red Bull car, but also put the result in the context of track characteristics and the cars ‘ respective strengths and weaknesses.

“We will see now in Singapore, which should be more of a one where we should perform well,” said Stella. We’ll see how the championship’s rest will unfold once we get back to fighting for victories.

“But definitely Max is in the contention for the drivers ‘ championship. We were aware of it, and it is still being confirmed today.

Charles Leclerc of Ferrari effectively sums up the situation.

“Max is not leaving anything on the table, that for sure”, Leclerc said. They have taken a significant step forward with the car, and they are now very strong as well.

I don’t believe Red Bull is now dominating after the last two weekends for McLaren because it hasn’t been a very smooth weekend for them.