Lando Norris slapped with massive Qatar GP penalty after Max Verstappen reported him
Lando Norris has been slapped with a massive 10 second stop and go penalty for failing to slow under yellow flags, dropping him from second in the Qatar Grand Prix to dead last, with world champion Max Verstappen having reported him.
Norris started Sunday’s race third on the grid, behind Verstappen and Mercedes’ George Russell. Pole man Russell endured an awful start, with both Norris and Verstappen nipping by him at the first corner.
The McLaren star attempted to take the lead but Verstappen closed him off, with the duo quickly pulling away from the pack. But 31 laps into the race, a wing mirror came off a car in the middle of the home straight.
That was spotted by Verstappen who was running just ahead of him. Verstappen said over team radio: “There was a yellow in the middle of the straight.”
His engineer replied: “There was, we’ll have a look and see if he lifted. Lando did not lift.” Verstappen added: “I hope you report that then.”
The stewards as expected looked into the British driver and they penalised him a 10 second stop and go penalty. What that meant was that he had to slow down and pull into the pit lane and out of the race, while every other driver went past him.
Norris only managed to struggle himself back into the top 10 but had to content with one point only. He seemed surprise by his penalty; he asked his engineer for what? when told about the penalty.
This misfortune meant Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc moved into second with his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri settling for third place. Piastri also seemed to be baffled at how Norris received this penalty.
He said: ‘It was a hard race, the cars in front were very close so it was nearly impossible to make progress into DRS.’ Good to get third, but not the ideal that we wanted to achieve.
What was Lando’s penalty for I have no idea, it was rather significant for some reason. They reckon it’s going to take the lot just to finally clinch the deal.
Verstappen on the other hand was happy to have defeated his championship rival, after making sure he secured the championship last weekend at the Vegas GP. The Dutchman said: Yes that was a very good race, the car was a lot better today.
375 That first stretch was extremely, extremely quick – me and Lando were having each other’s backs and tails and were never more than 1.8s apart – it was fun out there, man. Few SC incidents, but quite satisfied. It must have been a long while since it was this dry for a team to be this competitive.
It was a very interesting into Turn 1 with Norris but pretty pleased to come out here and win. The last few years we’ve been competitive [in Abu Dhabi] so hopefully we can fight for a win there again.
