Lando Norris still regrets gifting Lewis Hamilton the win at the 2021 Russian Grand Prix, having been looked set to claim victory himself.
Norris had qualified on pole position, though saw Carlos Sainz overtake him within two corners of the race's start. But he took that place back 13 laps later, a position he would hold onto until the late stages as McLaren eyed a rare win.
But the Englishman was caught out when heavy rain began falling, with Norris ignoring the advice of his engineers to change onto intermediate tyres. Hamilton meanwhile changed onto inters on lap 50, eventually closing the gap on Norris to two seconds as the McLaren star struggled for control of his car.
The slippery conditions ultimately proved to be Norris' downfall, with the Englishman having refused to come in despite all but two of the other members of the grid changing tyres. Heartbreakingly, with just two laps to go, Norris skidded off the track at turn five.
That allowed Hamilton to sail past him and take the race win, with Norris himself eventually finishing seventh. And Norris has admitted that the events of that fateful day in Sochi have been hard to get over.
“It depends a little bit on the reason for the result. If it’s definitely through my own doing, [it will take] a lot longer to get over," the McLaren star, who remains without a race win, told the Sky Sports F1 podcast.
“If it’s my mistake, whether I crash or I spin or get a penalty, if it’s 100 per cent down to me, even say 50 per cent down to me, it’s a lot worse than if it’s just because we don’t have the pace in the car, things like that. So it depends a lot on the situation we’re in.
HAVE YOUR SAY! Who will win the Canadian Grand Prix? Comment below.
“Sochi ’21 was probably the one of the hardest things to get over. Not simply because of what happened but also what was almost achieved. So it depends on the situation of how things happen but I’m a lot better now than what I was.
"I used to struggle probably a lot more back in ’19, back in ’20. Now I guess I just look at it in a constructive way of learning what went wrong? How can you fix it? How can you be better at whatever the problem was? And just try and move on from that.”
At the time, Hamilton admitted he had sympathy for his young rivals, having taken full advantage of his misfortune. And he backed Norris to break his hoodoo to become one of F1's biggest stars.
“Look, he’s so young, he’s got so many more wins up ahead of him. He’s been doing a fantastic job, he did a fantastic job yesterday in the wet, he’s doing such a great job leading that team and McLaren have won the last race – they’ve been very hard to beat for us,” he said.
“I can’t take credit for that amazing decision; that was the team’s. I think, for me, I was very much in no man’s land for a long time in terms of, I didn’t really know where I was in my race, I had no idea how far Lando was ahead.
“They called me in, and I was like: ‘He’s right there! I’ve only got three laps or so to catch up 24 seconds.’ I was like, ‘No way!’ So, I wasn’t convinced the first lap. I put all my faith in the team and they called me in and I I believed them."
READ MORE:
