Ahead of the British Grand Prix this weekend, McLaren driver Lando Norris spoke about Red Bull’s domination this season and disagreed that races are getting boring.
Red Bull has been able to pick up every single win this season, seven wins going Max Verstappen’s way and two to Sergio Perez. Austrian Grand Prix saw eight of the 20 drivers getting penalised for breaking the track limit constantly, but Norris doesn’t have any issue with the calls by the stewards.
With Verstappen leading the Racers Championship with 229 points and Red Bull topping the Constructors charts at 377 points, the leaders are not expecting to see any competition in future races.
Many F1 fans and racers have not been happy with this domination. It even led to Lewis Hamilton suggesting rule changes so that a single team does not dominate the entire sport, which unsurprisingly Verstappen did not agree with.
Speaking to SPORTbible, Norris stated that the races are actually getting more and more exciting as the drivers are closing in on each other on the tracks. He admitted that Red Bull has been untouched this season but also recalled that one-team domination is seen in the sport from time to time.
Norris named McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes who have displayed complete command over the tracks in the past seasons.
The 23-year-old Brit has been involved in the midfield races for all of this season. “It’s still very racy, even between Ferraris and Mercedes and Astons. It’s generally good racing it’s mainly just Red Bull, who are doing a very good job, you know, just hats off to them, they’re doing a better job than everyone else,” said Norris.
McLaren ranks sixth in the Constructors Championships and are often in battles against Alpine, Ferrari and Aston Martin. The team has not been able to win a single race this season and gathered the most points in the Austrian GP where Norris came in at 4th position between Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin at 5th and Sergio Perez’s Red Bull at third.
Speaking about the track limit penalties in the Austrian GP, Norris said that the racers do hate it when a small mistake cost them their place. He said that going over the track limit and coming back is easy and it would be an easier limit to find.
Norris said, “It’s not as easy as what it looks to stay on the track every lap and drive perfectly because things happen you know. You make mistakes, and the tyres are getting older, every lap the winds changing, the track temperature is changing, the fuel loads coming down, and then there’s just human error you know.”
Norris added that driving every lap at 150-300 kmph and keeping track of a few centimetres is a tough job.
Out of the 20 drivers on the grid for the Austrian GP, only 2 drivers, George Russell and Zhou Guanyu, were not found to be breaking the track limit.
Kevin Magnussen, Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton, Logan Sargeant, Nyck de Vries, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Yuki Tsunoda and Esteban Ocon received penalties for breaking the track limit regularly during the race. The penalties came in after the race and resulted in the standings seeing massive changes. Ocon broke the record of getting the most penalties in a single race, as he received 4 penalties totalling to 30 seconds.
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