Norris happy to play ‘team game’ to help Sainz in Monaco

Lando Norris had no concerns in sacrificing his race to help McLaren teammate Carlos Sainz achieve a better result in Monaco last weekend, saying the team had prepared for the eventuality.

Norris completed a long first stint in Monaco that saw him back up a number of drivers who had already pitted, giving Sainz the opportunity to create a gap ahead and gain positions from Kevin Magnussen and Daniel Ricciardo, ultimately finishing the race sixth.

Norris explained that graining on his front tyres had left him struggling in the early part of the race in Monaco, prompting McLaren to turn its focus to helping Sainz gain some places.

“The whole race we didn’t have the best pace to be honest,” Norris said. “I grained the fronts on the first lap of the race. It compromised me a lot in the first stint, and therefore I didn’t have a lot of pace.

“At the point we knew where I couldn’t do anything special, it was turned more into a team game, and I had to try and help Carlos and the team try and get a better result rather than just focusing on my own race.

“That made it a bit more difficult, but I still did the best I could. At the end of the day, if I didn’t make one or two mistakes that I did, maybe a P10 was possible for myself, but not much more.”

McLaren kept Norris updated on Sainz’s progress throughout the race in Monaco, allowing him to open up a big enough window for the Spaniard to pit and come out ahead of Magnussen and Ricciardo, who had been ahead on-track prior to early stops.

“They told me what I needed to focus on lap time-wise. Obviously trying to look after my tyres at the same time which cost a bit of pace, but they told me what I needed to do and I did that and allowed him to box cleanly ahead of me,” Norris said.

“If I didn’t do that, I think he probably would have been passed by the Toro Rossos because they were quite a bit quicker.

“I think they did a very good job. We did our homework before the race because we thought this might happen, so we were well prepared and thankfully that got us some good points.”