McLaren will ‘regret’ the controversial Norris decision with a Verstappen comparison

McLaren must feel a sense of “regret” over their Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri team order saga in Hungary.

That’s the claim of Jos Verstappen, the former Formula 1 driver and father of Max Verstappen, who battled and defeated McLaren’s Lando Norris to win his fourth straight world championship in F1 2024.

Max Verstappen ‘would have had problems’ with McLaren request

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Team orders at McLaren became a key topic of debate as a push for not only the constructors’ title but also the drivers’ emerged as McLaren took over from Red Bull’s RB20 as arguably the leading car on the grid after Red Bull’s dominance faded.

Ultimately, a decisive moment came in Hungary, when Norris, after undercutting team-mate Oscar Piastri with McLaren defending the one-two result, was asked to leave Piastri back in the lead.

A period of back-and-forth ensued before Norris finally obliged, freeing Piastri to take victory, with Verstappen later securing the title, sealing the deal in Las Vegas with two rounds remaining, his final margin over Norris 63 points.

And Verstappen Sr believes McLaren’s F1 2024 review will contain regrets regarding the Hungarian GP.

“They must have regretted that later,” he said of orders from McLaren’s Budapest team when spoken to Formula 1.

“But it’s hard to say anything about it, because you don’t know what’s going on in that team, what contracts are like and what agreements were made.”

What Mr. What Verstappen knows is that his son may not have been able to comply with such a request.

“But if I translate that to Max, I think he would have had trouble letting his teammate pass,” Jos continued. “But everyone is different and has to respond in the way that suits them.”

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Norris has chosen a different turning point than his F1 2024 title battle with Verstappen, namely the Mexican Grand Prix, where Verstappen was given a 10-second penalty for forcing Norris off the track and a further 10 seconds for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. when the titular protagonists went to battle.

There, Norris said he learned that Verstappen is not always the perfect driver.

Asked after his victory in the Abu Dhabi season finale if this boosted his confidence ahead of a potential F1 2025 title challenge, Norris told media including PlanetF1.com: “Honestly, it’s probably the harder moments that are the ones you learn most people, so it’s kind of true what people say.

“The harder times, my struggles with Max, that kind of thing, certain other things during the season.

“If I go back to Austria and Silverstone, there are just some along the way and some have other reasons, but none of them are necessarily the ones that have made me doubt myself more.

“This season has been my best season from a performance point of view personally, was it good enough? It probably wasn’t, no.

“But when you look at my own performance and my qualifying performance, for example, they’ve been almost twice as good as what I was last year – especially compared to the other guys in the exact same car.

“Obviously I lost out on a few things and there were maybe three starts this year that sometimes lost me a position or two – but it was often positions just for Max.

“None of them, when I look back on them, made me feel like I didn’t get what it takes.

“The only moments came when it was directly against Max. It will always be difficult to fight against Max in any state and no one feels comfortable racing Max.

“I think Mexico was a bit of a turning point as it proved that not everything he does is perfect.

“I think if we all go back to Austin and go back to Turn 12, (the) majority of almost everyone on the grid, as drivers and also externally, disagreed with me getting a penalty. Either we both didn’t get one, or we both should have gotten one.

“So I think it’s little things along the way, but definitely from a pace point of view, not to doubt myself this year, and I definitely think I’ve given myself more faith.

“It was more just that toe-to-toe fight with one of the best in the world. And the thing is, what you don’t see on the outside are some of those moments where, if I did certain things, we would have crashed.

“People from the outside have no idea what it takes and those moments where you accept to lose a game and that’s the case and it was because of where we were in the first six, seven races of the year.

“We lost too many points and I was just in that position where I couldn’t get as much as I needed and wanted, but I don’t use any of these as excuses.

“I’m saying I didn’t have what it took this season to fight Max and deliver what I needed to deliver.

“But it definitely gave me the feeling of, ‘OK, if I improve this little bit here, this little bit here,’ for the first time, I have the confidence to say that I definitely have what it takes.”

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