Lando Norris hints he will call for a review at McLaren after their controversial decision to leave him out for an extra lap at the 2025 Belgian GP saw Oscar Piastri build up enough of a gap to win the race.
As the track began to dry at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps and the crossover point for slick tyres loomed upon the horizon, the Brit was busy reeling in his teammate who had taken the lead on the opening racing lap.
Keeping him honest by hovering around the one second matin on Sunday, he was perhaps too close for his own good when his Australian teammate made a late dart into the pits for slick rubber.
McLaren decided to leave Norris out for an extra lap on worn intermediates instead of double stacking, allowing his colleague to build up a large margin whilst Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen and George Russell all pitted earlier too.
This ultimately played a key role in handing the 24-year-old the gap he needed to manage until the end of the race as Piastri took his first win since the Spanish GP on June 1 and extended his championship lead in the process.
In the wake of that, Norris hints he will call for an internal review at the team to make sure McLaren make the right decision in the future after the controversial moment at the 2025 Belgian GP.
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“I need to ask the team,” Norris told media, including Total-Motorsport.com. “It’s tough because you’re going to lose quite a good chunk of time doing that as well.
“Considering the slick tyre was so much better by that point… Like Oscar said, it was a late call for us to box on that lap. I think if we review it, we probably would have kicked ourselves a little bit for staying out as long as we did.
“I think there was enough evidence that we should have boxed early, but no one boxed that early. It was just Lewis that boxed one lap earlier than us. It was just more painful for me that Oscar got the good lap.
“I had to go one lap longer. That’s life.”
Norris says he was powerless to stop Piastri overtake at 2025 Belgian GP
The moment was a reverse of the 2024 British GP when Norris, leading the race, was given the privilege of pitting first whilst Piastri was left out for an extra lap – something that dropped him from second down to sixth.
On that day, he finished 12.4 seconds off the lead meaning that the McLaren call likely cost him a shot at victory around Silverstone. This time in Spa, the shoe was on the other foot for his teammate.
But the defining moment of the race came on Lap 5, the first full racing lap, when the 25-year-old could watch as his Melbourne-born teammate came blasting by him on the Kemmel Straight.
That handed Piastri the lead of the race and ultimately led to the pit-stop loss for Norris, who managed to chase back to within 3.5 seconds but didn’t have enough juice in the tank to contend after a handful of minor but costly mistakes.
Is there anything he could have done differently to defend his place? He admits a better run out of La Source may have offered him more protection, but also concedes it may have made the overtake even more inevitable by exaggerating the slipstream effect.
“I don’t know. It’s hard,” Norris added. “I didn’t have the best Turn 1, so hard to know how much that played a part. At the same time, Oscar came past me pretty easily.
“So even if I had a better Turn 1, his run and the slipstream probably still would have got me. Not too disappointed. Of course disappointed to finish second.
“When you saw Saturday and you saw today, then P1 didn’t look the best place to begin with. I also didn’t get the best Turn 1, so I need to look at what I could have done better.”
