Lando Norris has said that McLaren’s decision to stay out in the early stages of the Dutch GP as rain started to fall cost the team.
Norris along with several other drivers opted not to pit as showers began at Zandvoort, meaning he was several seconds slower than other cars with intermediate tyres on.
When he eventually did pit, he dropped back out of the top 10 from second on the grid at the start, and while he recovered to finish seventh at the chequered flag, Norris said that the decision by the team was the wrong call.
“It’s clear we made the wrong decision. We made a bad decision. It’s something we’ll we’ll review and talk about and discuss because I guess we made made a couple this season,” Norris told the media, including Total-Motorsport.com, after the race.
“We’ve lost too many positions and also points throughout this year with a couple of these things. In the second part of the race we made up for it, we made the right decision, one of the first ones to box and we gained some time again to position on George things like that.
“The first one was just not great.”
Not like Russia
McLaren on several occasions have made calls which cost them in tricky conditions, most notably Norris’ decision to go against the team’s advice to pit while he was leading the 2021 Russian GP which led to him spinning out as conditions changed.
But Norris said he didn’t think that decision making at the Dutch GP was a comparable situation.
“I think they’re quite different and I think we’ve made some good steps and some good progress,” Norris said.
“Today was evident we were a long way from where we needed to be.”
