Lando Norris still angry about ‘unfair’ yellow flag that ‘ruined my weekend’

Lando Norris continued to vent his frustrations about an “unfair” yellow flag which led to his shock early qualifying exit at the F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver exited qualifying in Q1 after being forced to back off during his final flying lap when yellow flags were flown for an incident involving Alpine’s Esteban Ocon.

Norris drove an excellent race to recover from 15th on the grid and finish ahead of title rival Max Verstappen in fourth, but he was still irked by what could have been after seeing teammate Oscar Piastri claim the win.

“It wasn’t fair,” Norris told media including Crash.net after Sunday’s race in Baku. “You don’t have to be a scientist to work that out. It’s not for me to decide, it’s not for me to say.

“I know I got fourth today and that’s not bad, but it could have been better. Oscar showed what was possible today. It was unfair. There was no yellow the whole lap and they put a yellow out just as I come past.

“Did I go off the track just before it? Yes. Would I have still easily got into the top-15? Yes. I know there’s a lot of people that thought it would have ruined my lap, but even with my off track, I only lost a couple of tenths and I still would have easily been in.

“People can say what they want and I find a lot of it funny but this was out of my control and it was something that was unfair. It cost me a good amount of points in the championship today and kind of ruined my weekend. So it’s disappointing.”

Having fought back from a late pit stop to catch and pass Verstappen, as well as setting the fastest lap, Norris has reduced the Red Bull driver’s championship lead by three points. The gap now stands at 59 points with seven races remaining. 

“I couldn’t have asked for a lot more,” Norris admitted. “A good start, a good strategy. I would have loved to have got past Alex a bit earlier, he made my life tough.

“But yeah, I don’t think I could have asked for a lot more. It was definitely better than we were expecting before today. Fourth is a great result, to be ahead of Max just on merit, from pace and strategy. It was a good result.

“The car was flying, which, because it was so good, it almost made me more annoyed about yesterday and how silly that yellow flag was.”

Norris admitted he was expecting to lose ground to Verstappen in the title race with McLaren’s pre-race simulations suggesting that eighth place would have been his likely result.

“We would have been happy with eighth,” he explained. “We just expected the top four teams to go. Obviously me being the eighth car, we expected them to go and beat everyone else.

“But I got into 10th I think quite quickly, I think five or six laps into the race. I had a good start, good opening lap, even on the hard tyre with everyone else on the medium. So that was a good kick start to the whole day.

"Then I got behind Alex, I couldn’t do a lot and Carlos got past. I fought Max for a little bit and Max just getting stuck behind me for a few laps and overheated his tyres and I actually could race against him.

“Alex boxed and this made my race. As soon as Alex boxed I think my pace was the best on track, even on the hards from the beginning of the race. I managed to create a good gap and just unlocked all of the potential the car had.

“Eighth was our target but we knew doing a hard start and if things went well, better was possible. But it’s hard to anticipate it and know what it’s going to be.”