‘Not a pleasant moment,’ Max Verstappen labeled the incident with Lando Norris during his final flying lap in the Singapore qualification. The Dutchman noticed how the McLaren driver was ‘very slow’ heading to the pits, and had to abort his last lap when he ended up in the dirty air of the MCL39. According to Verstappen, the incident could have been avoided: ‘It seemed a bit unnecessary to drive to the pit lane so slowly.’
Max Verstappen had to concede the pole position in Singapore to George Russell. However, it was a close call, and the Dutchman could have secured his first pole at the Marina Bay Street Circuit. “The potential was definitely there, I saw that during my second fast lap on my steering wheel,” Verstappen tells the media in Singapore. “But in Q3, you simply cannot afford to have a car driving so close in front of you. On a street circuit, there should be at least an eight-second gap between the cars.”
Verstappen is referring to an incident during his final fast lap in Q3. The Dutch driver had to abort this lap when he encountered the dirty air of Lando Norris. The British driver was on his way to the pits at the time. “I’m not exactly sure what happened there,” Verstappen continues. “It seemed a bit unnecessary to drive into the pits so slowly. Usually, as a driver, you’re told if someone is behind you. You typically move aside. You can’t say that a car is holding you up like that, but these cars are so sensitive to dirty air, so in a qualifying round, you absolutely don’t want someone driving in front of you like that. It’s kind of an unwritten rule.”
Verstappen Responds to Norris
McLaren CEO Zak Brown already labeled the moment a ‘non-issue’, while Lando Norris himself also felt that he had not held up his colleague. “That’s what I would say, yes,” Verstappen responds to the McLaren driver’s comments. “But it happened. I’m focusing on myself again. That moment wasn’t ideal, but in the end, we’re still second and were highly competitive.”
