A sharp radio team
At the end of the Silverstone weekend, Lando Norris’s fourth place went somewhat unnoticed, ‘hidden’ by Charles Leclerc’s victory, Max Verstappen’s crash, the Safety Car chaos, and the misfortunes that plagued the World Championship leader, Andrea Kimi Antonelli. However, the result of the reigning world champion deserves attention, not so much for the placement itself but rather for what Norris said to journalists at the end of the race.
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The Englishman in fact gave his team a rather harsh telling-off, something quite unusual for him. Already after the Sprint, the #1 papaya had let himself go to a rather sharp team radio, in which he almost begged the team not to make mistakes for the next day. “Great job, but guys, let’s do things right for once, please!“, Norris had said after the checkered flag of the short race. “We have useful data to do things properly tomorrow“, his race engineer Will Joseph had replied.
“We need to improve as a team – Norris then added to the journalists present at Silverstone who asked him what the reason for his team radio was – I don’t need to go into details, but there are aspects we should simply do a better job on. It’s quite simple. These are aspects that limit our performance and our potential to achieve podiums and points when needed. They are simply some things we need to improve as a team“.
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Direct criticism of the team
However, Norris on Sunday evening, at the end of the GP, seemed anything but happy with the work done by the Woking team: “Everything except the result was quite disappointing. Honestly, I don’t know how we ended up in fourth place. But reliability is now fundamental. I don’t know what happened to Antonelli and Verstappen, but an important part is not making mistakes and focusing on reliability. We managed that, but the pace was quite poor. It wasn’t pleasant. It’s not a nice car to drive. It’s one of the hardest cars I’ve ever driven in Formula 1. There are many things we need to improve”.
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