Lando Norris has jokingly suggested that emulating the famous crash between McLaren predecessors Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost may be the only way of stopping Max Verstappen at the Japanese GP.
Senna crashed into Prost at the first corner of the first lap of the 1990 race at Suzuka with the Brazilian securing the championship if both drivers failed to finish, an incident which sparked massive controversy.
Norris was beaten to the front row of this year’s race by teammate Oscar Piastri, who will start alongside Verstappen after the Dutchman returned to normal service with pole position following a surprisingly difficult outing in Singapore.
And speaking to media after the session, Norris had a tongue and cheek suggestion for his teammate on how the pair could look to challenge Red Bull for the win.
“We’re gonna try. I mean, there’s not if he’s leading by Turn 1, there’s not a lot you can really do. So. I don’t know. If you want to emulate Prost/ Senna, Oscar, into Turn 1, you can do that,” Norris joked
“Hopefully that would be lovely for me. But yea, I think we’ll try. I think our race pace is decent, it is definitely not going to be as good as the Red Bull, but we’ll do our best.”
Red Bull Hit Back
Red Bull suffered the worst performance of the year last time out in the Singapore GP, with Verstappen’s record breaking win of runs coming to an abrupt end as the RB19 bafflingly failed to switch on around the street circuit.
Given the dominance of the car elsewhere this season, speculation emerged that the team had been hampered by an FIA technical directive regarding flexi wings, but given Verstappen’s pace at Suzuka, that argument appears to be unwarranted.
And the Dutchman wasted no time in giving his thoughts on the critics who believed the team had been hit by the new rules.
“We had a bad weekend, of course the people start talking about that it’s all because of the technical directives,” Verstappen told media. “I think they can go suck on an egg.
“From my side, I was just very fired up to have a good weekend here and make sure that we were strong.”
