Lando Norris fumes he's 'fed up' as McLaren boss admits making two British GP errors
Lando Norris led for much of the British Grand Prix but eventually finished third after a key error saw both Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen pass him in the last 12 laps
Lando Norris has been left 'fed up' as McLaren team principal Andrea Stella admitted they had made two errors which cost them a win in the British Grand Prix.
Norris started the race third, but led for the majority of the running after passing Mercedes duo George Russell and Lewis Hamilton. Despite two rain showers, Norris was able to hold onto his lead until there were 12 laps remaining.
At that point, the 24-year-old dived into the pits to change from intermediate tyres to slick soft tyres. Hamilton had already pitted by that point, switching onto soft tyres himself, but Norris lost his lead after overshooting his pit box.
That cost his mechanics crucial seconds, with Hamilton able to sweep past him before the McLaren man left the pit lane. Norris then struggled badly with his soft tyres, eventually finishing third after Max Verstappen also overtook him, much to the Brit's frustation.
"Just the two at the end: what tyre to box on to and a lap too late," he told Sky Sports when asked which errors cost him a win. "The lap too late is completely on me. That's just driver feel of when to box.
" Boxing to the soft is a team call and between me. So many good parts but again just a couple that let us down. Threw away the win so pretty disappointed. I expected to come out ahead of the Mercedes. I didn't.
"Even if I had come out ahead, I wouldn't have won the race because we were too slow. I don't know. I'm fed up of saying 'I should have done better'. I don't care if it takes time. I should be doing it now.
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"We should be winning now. I should be making better decisions than what I'm making. I'm just disappointed. It's a win in F1 and I'm not going to settle for something less when we should have achieved it.
"Should we have won a race today? Yes. Did we? No. So I'm not going to be happy with another third place. Lost more points to Max, so I'm not going to be happy with that. There's positives, but I'm only going to be satisfied with the end result and I'm not."
Norris' boss Stella admitted he and his strategists had made errors that cost their side. First he picked out the decision to pit Oscar Piastri a lap later than the rest of the frontrunners, before pointing to the decision to move Norris onto the softs.
"Difficult conditions, many calls to be made. Many were right, but there were a couple that with hindsight we would do differently. I think we have to acknowledge that in giving one more lap to Oscar, we lost a lot of time before going onto the intermediate tyres," Stella told Sky Sports.
"We didn't want to lose the time in the double shuffle, but in hindsight it would have been the right thing to do. And the second call is that with Lando we should have gone on medium tyres at the end, rather than try to match Lewis.
"It would have been the safer to be competitive at the end of the race, even if Lewis had been ahead after the stop, then we would have had our shot at the end of the race with more consistent tyres. It's easy in hindsight. They are all opportunities to grow and improve."
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