Lando Norris admits he might need “to be more demanding” with McLaren strategy after a safe approach arguably ruled him out of winning the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix.
Norris started and finished second to Max Verstappen at Suzuka last time out, limited by next to zero overtaking opportunities and saw his lead in the Drivers’ standings cut to just one point over the Dutchman.
With passing on track out of the question, strategy could have proved pivotal, but McLaren pit Norris on the same lap as Verstappen, fearful of a Safety Car intervention scuppering an undercut or losing track position with an overcut.
“There’s a lot of things in hindsight, nothing which didn’t come without risk, which was probably the biggest answer to things,” Norris told select media, including Motorsport Week after arriving in Bahrain.
“I think it’s very easy, and even for me when I stepped out of the car and I looked at things, I wasn’t best pleased with how things looked, and maybe what felt like our approach to the whole thing.
“But nothing was a guarantee, you know, nothing was a guarantee that I would have passed Max. Nothing was a guarantee that the undercut would have been strong enough.
“I would have come out always in every moment in traffic and behind the car, so there was no guarantee for everything.
“So, however much people want to talk and say things and say how bad of a job we did, I disagree and I stand always by our decisions as a team, and I have a lot of trust and faith that we always have our best interests at heart.”
Norris would do things differently if given Japanese GP do-over
Norris admitted that if he could do the Japanese GP again, he’d go with a “more aggressive approach” to strategy.
“I think at times there’s an ability where I might want to take more risk to go for a win,” he said.
“I need to acknowledge that could be the case and sometimes I want to accept second is still not a bad result, but I’m here to win races and not settle for second.
“So definitely from my side I would love to go back and redo things with a slightly more aggressive approach, but I do know deep down that it’s a long season and sometimes points on the board is better than taking unnecessary risks.”
Norris added, “I also always know that the team has the best picture of the whole race, better than any other driver,” but continued by saying, “I also have the best feeling of the car, the size, how overtaking might be, that kind of thing.
“You just need harmony between you and your race engineer and strategy team,” Norris explained, before going on to debate with himself whether he ought to be “more demanding” from within the McLaren cockpit.
“It might be that I need to potentially be more demanding at times and more pushing of the team, but it’s just getting the dynamic right at the end of the day between that risk-reward factor and knowing how much risk you want to take on the day and how aggressive you want to be,” he said.
“Sometimes that’s me stepping up and doing it myself, and sometimes that comes from the team, and maybe it’s vice versa.
“Maybe the team wants to be aggressive, and on that day, for whatever feeling I have, I’m not wanting to be too aggressive.
“It’s just working as a team. I think we’re doing very well, but continuing to work on that and getting the most out of one another on the day.”
Norris is clearly wrapped in two minds about whether McLaren’s strategy in Suzuka should have played out differently, but as he points out, the team still came away from Japan with a strong result.
“Would I and have we reviewed what level of risk we wanna take in different scenarios, I think is probably our bigger question after last weekend,” he said.
“Would I be willing to take that risk of boxing behind more cars and go for the win, then yes.
“But, we still finished 2nd and 3rd, we still got more points in the constructors, and I still had a good result as a driver for points.
“But I did lose out to Max, and he’s my main competitor.”
READ MORE – McLaren couldn’t risk alternate Japan strategy with Lando Norris in Max Verstappen chase
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