By Alan Baldwin
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Lando Norris kept Formula One fans on tenterhooks as he ignored pleas by McLaren to hand back the lead to teammate Oscar Piastri at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday, but after finally giving way he conceded the Australian deserved to win.
The Briton’s eventual compliance allowed Piastri to celebrate a first victory and a one-two finish that sent McLaren second overall.
“I didn’t deserve to win the race today. Simple as that. So the fact I was in that position was incorrect,” Norris told reporters.
“I shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place. I shouldn’t have been given that hope of ‘I’m here, I’m leading a race’.”
Norris said he was always going to give back the place but, as a racing driver, was obviously going to question the situation and challenge the orders.
“I was going to wait until the last lap, the last corner,” he added.
“But then they (McLaren) said if there was a safety car all of a sudden, and I couldn’t let Oscar go through, then it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot. Then I was like, ‘yeah, it’s fair point’. And I let him go.”
Norris recognised it might have played out differently to television viewers, but said the highlighted messages gave the wrong impression — even if there was no doubting his disappointment.
“You can make what you will of what you hear and what you think you know and that kind of stuff,” he said.
“But I know that I always was going to give it back unless they changed their mind on what they were saying. And they didn’t. So all good.”
Norris, who started on pole position, said he lost the win at the start when Piastri went through to take the lead into the first corner.
The McLaren mechanics had already hurriedly replaced a throttle damper with the clock ticking to the grid being cleared and Norris said something had happened on his second gear change.
“I feel like we made things way too hard for ourselves and way too tricky for ourselves,” he added.
“We should have just boxed (pitted) Oscar first and things would have been simple, but they gave me the lead and I gave it back. So I shouldn’t have won today. I didn’t deserve to win because of my start and Oscar’s good start and that’s that.
“I don’t think that’s how it should work, that he should just let me pass for me to win because I’m fighting for a championship.
“It wasn’t my race today. He drove better, and he got a good start, and that was that.”
Norris is second in the championship, now 76 points behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen with 11 races remaining.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
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