Somerset Formula One star Lando Norris was only able to best a 10th place finish at the Japanese Grand Prix, but it was the drama on track involving a tractor that the Bristol-born driver was most enraged about.
On the first lap of the race, Norris’ former teammate Carlos Sainz lost all grip on the rain-soaked track and was sent spinning into a barrier, causing a red flag.
Soon after the incident, a tractor tried to recover the Spaniard’s car, but the rest of the grid were still on the track, and a speeding Pierre Gasly, who was attempting to limit the gap to the car in front of him under the safety car, almost collided with the vehicle in the misty conditions.
This raised lots of queries with the FIA as to why this was allowed to happen after a similar incident at Suzuka occurred just years ago, where the sport sadly lost Jules Bianchi.
After the race, Norris took to Twitter to explain his anger on the incident, stating: “Wtf. How’s this happened!? We lost a life in this situation years ago. We risk our lives, especially in conditions like this. We wanna race. But this… Unacceptable.”
He was not the only driver to vent his anger, as George Russell, Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel joined the Brit in sharing their feelings in the media pen following the conclusion of the shortened race.
As for the race itself, Norris struggled to improve upon his qualifying performance on Saturday and finished in the same position he started in, after dropping to as low as 17th following his second pit stop.
After the long red flag ended, the race was able to get back underway, and he joined the grid in switching to wet tyres but soon realised this was not the way to go.
He soon followed suit of Vettel and Nicholas Latifi and switched back on intermediate tyres, which allowed the McLaren driver to find some pace, setting his fastest lap of the race on the second lap of his new tyres, with a lap time of 1:48.175.
However, when comparing his lap time to the rest of the grid, he was miles off the pace. Zhou Guanyu ended with the fastest lap of the race, with a 1:44.411, which was 3.764 seconds faster than the Brit.
The biggest improver of the race was Latifi, who gained 10 positions throughout the 28 laps, and finished in ninth, claiming two points for Williams, one place ahead of the Bristolian.
With the one point gained for Norris and McLaren, it opened the door for Alpine to move ahead of their British rivals in the Constructors’ Championship and are now 13 points clear, thanks to Esteban Ocon’s and Alonso’s fourth and seventh-place finishes.
On the other hand, he is still comfortably sitting in seventh place in the Drivers’ Championship with 101 points, and can’t be overtaken by Ocon yet, even if he DNFs in Austin and the Frenchman is the victor.
“Firstly, I'm glad we got a race," Norris said. "The Japanese fans have been amazing here all weekend, and they waited in the rain for ages, so I'm glad we could give them that. Of course, as drivers, we always want to race. The race itself was a tricky one.
“I lost a lot of positions in the first start which was unfortunate, but then made up for it with the pit stop, and it was good to come away with a point. Finally, congratulations to Max on winning a second World Championship.”
Norris will now be looking for a strong result in front of a loud American crowd at the Circuit of the America’s in two weeks for the United States Grand Prix.
