Lando Norris claimed a ninth-place finish in the Mexican Grand Prix and admitted after the race that the strategy choice from the team potentially hampered his result compared to his teammate Daniel Ricciardo.
Starting from eighth on the grid, the Bristolian dropped as low as 15th after switching to hard tyres on Lap 31, but was able to fight his way through the field, once again in the final laps of the race, and claimed two points for the Papaya team.
Ricciardo was handed a ten-second penalty for a collision with Yuki Tsunoda, but this didn’t affect him, due to switching to soft tyres and finding some pace that wasn’t there at the start of the race.
Norris struggled to find any pace seen in Austin last week and was only able to best the 17th fastest lap time, with a 1:23.402 halfway into his stint on hard tyres.
As for the race itself, Norris and the majority of the grid had an extremely quiet race, apart from the aforementioned Tsunoda and Fernando Alonso who were the only two to have to retire in front of a loud Mexican crowd.
The retirement for the Spaniard will only help McLaren in the push to regain fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
Alonso’s teammate Esteban Ocon, struggled throughout the race to gain any positions but managed to run in the top 10 and split the McLaren duo, claiming eighth place and four points for the French team.
However, this does mean that the British team are now only seven points behind their French rivals with two races left in the season, meaning fourth place could go either way.
As for Norris, he still comfortably holds his seventh overall spot in the Drivers’ standings ahead of Ocon, with 111 points.
After the race, he explained his thoughts: “Today was a good race. I lost a couple of places at the start - it wasn’t a bad launch, but it wasn’t the best, and it’s a long run down to Turn One. I had to box when I did to cover Yuki, going onto the Hard tyres, but they weren’t the tyres to be on!
"I lost a lot of time compared to Daniel who went onto the Softs, which was a much, much quicker strategy in the end. I’m still happy because I think we did a good job and got the most out of it that we could.
"The team scored some good points and we out-scored Alpine, which is the goal. We’ll head back to the factory to work hard ahead of Brazil in two weeks.”
After a positive weekend for the team and Norris, the Brit will look to extend his lead over Ocon in the Drivers’ Championship as the season has its penultimate race in Brazil in a fortnight.
