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Lando Norris turned up for the Hungarian Grand Prix press conference earlier than fellow podium-finishers Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri having completed his television interviews more briskly.
The image of him sat on the sofa for perhaps five minutes, waiting for the others to arrive, foreshadowed what was to come in parts of the 30-minute press conference as often the focus was on him rather than his race-winning McLaren Formula 1 team-mate.
Oscar Piastri was nominally the story, but Norris stole his thunder - and it genuinely seemed he did so inadvertently.
It's impossible to know exactly what went through Norris’s mind, but there were signs as he answered the journalists’ questions that perhaps he was going through a process of realising how his conduct in the race and the radio traffic had looked to the outside world.
Norris repeatedly said he always intended to give the place back to the team-mate he had jumped for the lead with an undercut and there’s no reason to doubt that.
He magnanimously stressed early on that “I didn’t give up the race win, I lost the race win off the line” and that Piastri “deserved to win today”, but inevitably that wasn’t quite enough.
Asked how seriously he considered not giving the place back he admitted “things are always going to go through your mind because you have got to be selfish” before stressing that “I’m also a team player”.
But tellingly, he also admitted that “my mind was going pretty crazy at the time”. That’s understandable as racing drivers exist to win and ceding the lead by choice, regardless of the circumstance, runs counter to their very being. There’s nothing wrong with that feeling and Norris did everything as he should have done.
What made this into such a significant story was the fact that McLaren made its position clear early on in that final stint, telling Norris after the final round of pitstops to “re-establish the order at your convenience”.
But the fact that there were multiple subsequent inquiries during that stint, including a radio check given his lack of response, a reminder of the discussions that happen on Sunday mornings about in-race tactics, as well as the advice that the way to win a championship was working as a team not doing it alone, proves it beyond reasonable doubt.
The McLaren pitwall, regardless of what might be claimed now, was worried. If genuinely there were no doubts, then the communication to Norris during that stint would be nonsensical.
I put the question to Norris that given those multiple reminders about changing positions, why not give the pitwall a confirmation to put their minds at rest if you were going to do it?
“I don't need to, “said Norris. “I know what I want to do and what I'm not going to do, and of course I'm going to just question it and challenge it and that's what I did.
“I was going to wait until the last lap, the last corner, but then they said if there was a safety car all of a sudden I couldn't let Oscar go through then it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot.
“So then I was like ‘yeah it's a fair point’ and I let him go with two to go or something.
“That's just your opinion of what you hear, but that's the same with all sports, you can make what you will of what you hear and what you think you know and that kind of stuff.
“But I know that I always was going to give it back unless they changed their mind on what they were saying and they didn't. So all good.”
My opinion that the pitwall had real concerns Norris wouldn’t comply is well-founded, as a listen to the in-car comms during that final stint would prove.
There’s nothing close to sufficient evidence to suppose what Norris was really thinking, beyond the fact he was likely a little conflicted.
For what it’s worth, my suspicion as that stint played out was that he would follow the team order - but I wouldn't have bet the mortgage on it. It seems McLaren felt the same.
To his credit, Norris maybe recognised he had perhaps stolen his team-mate’s thunder and made a very legitimate point that he shouldn’t really have been put in such a situation. Waving a win in front of a racing driver is akin to dangling a biscuit in front of a labrador, even if there are valid strategic reasons to do it, but Norris ultimately proved he is well-trained enough to resist. Even so, he felt it would have been easier to avoid that situation entirely.
“I feel like we made things way too hard for ourselves and way too tricky for ourselves,” he said. “We should have just boxed Oscar first and things would have been simple, but they gave me the lead and I gave it back.“I shouldn't have won today, I didn't deserve to win because of my start and Oscar's good start and that's that.
“I know I was in that position for a while, 16-17 laps or whatever. It’s hard when you’re in that position to give it back because you're there.
“And of course that went through my mind, seven points that I am going to lose [in the world championship], but I think the real fact is I shouldn't have almost had them in the first place, I shouldn't have had them in my hand.”
Ultimately, all of this was moot. McLaren’s plan played out as intended, Norris obeyed the team order and Piastri was a worthy victor.
There was no offence committed here and it would be wrong to stir this up into anything more than it was. However, it wasn't nothing.
Perhaps there was a lesson in there for Norris in terms of just how much attention the world is paying, how things are perceived and how what he said was an “amazing” day for the team - a one-two finish for a team that’s making incredible progress - can be impacted by something that, in the moment, in the car, might not feel such a big deal.
Then again, he might also have realised exactly how it would play and was keen to make his point. There’s no way of knowing that and most likely he will always have known that this was not the right moment to make a stand.
Given McLaren’s rise and Piastri’s progress, the day might come when Norris is forced to be utterly ruthless as so many drivers have been in the past. Today also proved that if and when it does, he will be ready.
