Lando Norris has rejected the inference he is unsportsmanlike after the FIA stewards dismissed McLaren’s right of review into the British driver’s Canadian Grand Prix penalty.
Norris was handed a five-second punishment for unsportsmanlike behaviour in slowing under safety car conditions to avoid a double-stack pit stop behind team-mate Oscar Piastri, relegating him from ninth at the chequered flag to 13th.
In order to force a new hearing into the matter, the onus was on McLaren to submit significant, new and relevant information not available at the time of the original decision. Whilst it passed the test on the first two elements, it fell short on the latter.
That has left a stigma attached to Norris as unsportsmanlike, one he wholly rejects.
“Everyone knows I’m not unsportsmanlike, so it doesn’t affect me too much,” said Norris.
“There were certain situations, things we brought up to support the reasoning for why they (the stewards) should re-look into it.
“Once I read into everything that happened, there was even more reason for there not to be a penalty.
“I still stand by the fact that everything I did was completely normal, correct, and by the book.
“And what they suggest happened, there’s no ruling for it – there’s no ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that’, and there was a precedent set.”
Norris feels his actions at Montréal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve were no different from those of Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll to George Russell during the Azerbaijan GP when the Mercedes driver attempted to overtake the Canadian into the pit lane.
Believing that incident to be “a lot more dangerous”, he added: “No positions were lost in this instance (his own case), no one gained or lost from what happened.
“There’s nothing which makes what I did unsportsmanlike. So it was silly. The team had plenty of things to show that what I did was not incorrect, there was no wrongdoing, no bad intention.
“I still stand by my own point that what I did was absolutely fine.”
Norris reiterated a precedent had been set of “what is allowed and what is not allowed”, declaring it to be “strict”.
Norris has now questioned whether the stewards will continue to abide by their own new unwritten ruling.
“If they are consistent – which sometimes they’re not – there will be a lot of penalties that are coming up over the next months if people don’t oblige by the new regulation, the new rule,” he said.
Highlighting the vagaries of the stewards’ decision, Norris claimed a new regulation has to be drawn up to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.
“They kind of said it themselves – there’s no actual rule for it, and they need to implement a rule,” remarked Norris.
“That also kind of proves I did nothing wrong because there’s no rule, so I still stand by my own knowledge of what I did was absolutely fine.
“It’s a bit of a shame because we lost out on some points. The team did a good job to come up with evidence and show some things.
“It’s just a shame it didn’t go any further forward than what it did, but that happens. The team did a very good job.”
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