‘You can’t win’ in Verstappen battle – Norris

Lando Norris says he can’t win in a battle with Max Verstappen, since he will always be criticized for his approach, after wasting time with the defending champion in the Miami Grand Prix.

Verstappen ran to Norris torque 2 at the beginning of the race and the McLaren fell to the sixth place before going back to the third and being in a second of Verstappen when his teammate Oscar Piestri Tok the leader. That was a crucial period of the races, since Piastri cleared Verstappen after a battle for several laps and then escaped along the road to the melody of the 9s, while Norris fought to get the Red Bull.

“What can I say? If I don’t, people complain. If I do, people complain, so you can’t win,” Norris said. “But it is like it is with Max: it is a shock or does not happen. Unless you really do it well and you put it in the perfect position, so you can get there. I paid the price for not doing a job good enough today. I am still happy with the second.”

Norris also criticized Verstappen’s approach at the beginning of the race, claiming that the Dutch defense cost him the opportunity to finish higher.

“It was fine. He’s fighting hard, but it is up to him to do that,” he said. “He is ruining his own career. He is not running very intelligent. Some have probably finished 1-2 today, and they did not do it because, for what he is fighting, that is always expected, but that is what it is.”

After finally entering the second place, the margin of Piastri effectively doubled from the gap that existed between the drivers of McLaren before his battles of respect with Verstappen, but Norris said he still believed he could press until the closing partner.

“It is a good shot since when I got into the second,” he said. “There was a long way to go, I think 25, 30 laps almost at that time. Probable only stopped pushing the last four to five laps. The gap went from almost 10 to 4s or 3s, I almost. I did everything I could.

“I tried the whole race, basically, until the end. I made the whole race believing, but Oscar is driving well. It is fast. Campering from 10 was always going to be impossible, but I gave him a good return.