Lando Norris told his F1 World Championship rival Max Verstappen that he deserves the penalties he was slapped with during the Mexico Grand Prix.
The race at the top of the drivers’ standings boiled over during Sunday’s action as Verstappen was ruled to have taken his battle for second place with McLaren’s Norris too far by the stewards. Having started ahead of Norris in P2, the Brit was soon on the tail of the Red Bull following the safety car restart after Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz had passed the world champion for first place.
Norris and Verstappen’s friendship has been tested immensely this season and tensions reached boiling point as the Dutchman overstepped the mark. Adjudged to have pushed Norris off-track at Turn 5, Verstappen then sent an incredibly risky dive down the inside of Turn 8, forcing both himself and Norris off track.
The three-time world champion was handed an initial 10-second penalty for the incident at Turn 4 before he was slapped with another 10-second penalty for the Turn 8 farce. Despite being well-acquainted off-track, Norris felt he couldn’t bite his tongue any longer as he slammed Verstappen’s driving.
“It was not fair, clean racing,” Norris said of Verstappen. “And therefore I think he got what he had coming to him.
“I felt like I just had to avoid collisions, and that’s not what you feel like you want to do in a race. He’s in a very powerful position in the championship. He’s a long way ahead. He has nothing to lose. It’s not my job to control him. He knows how to drive. And I’m sure he knows that today was probably a bit over the limit.”
(Image: Getty Images)
However, Verstappen didn’t agree with the penalties he was handed. “Twenty seconds is a lot,” he said. “But I am not going to cry about it and I am also not going to share my opinion. The biggest problem I had is that it was a bad day in terms of race pace.”
Norris came home to finish second behind Sainz with Verstappen taking the flag in P6. Norris was joined on the podium by the other Ferrari of Charles Leclerc. The two sat in the cool down room before collecting their trophies and watched back the two incidents of Verstappen’s penalties. Neither driver commented but shared grimacing looks towards each other.
Following the action in Mexico, Verstappen leads Norris by 47 points with Leclerc in third – 24 points behind Norris. F1 heads to Sao Paulo, Brazil, next weekend for the final race in the triple header. There are four races and two sprints left to decide the championship.