Lando Norris reveals personal Lewis Hamilton apology for "wrong words"

Lando Norris - Lewis Hamilton

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Norris reveals personal Hamilton apology for "wrong words"

McLaren driver felt he was not respectful to six-time F1 champion

Ian Parkes & Will Gray

Friday 30 October 2020 16:43

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Lando Norris has revealed to personally messaging Lewis Hamilton to apologise for choosing “the wrong words” to describe his compatriot’s record-breaking 92 grand prix wins after last weekend’s Portuguese Grand Prix.

McLaren driver Norris, who made his debut last season and is currently the youngest driver on the grid, implied Hamilton’s victories had come easy because the Mercedes driver has the best car and is offered little competition.

The 20-year-old's words sparked a social media frenzy, after which he apologised via Twitter.

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Speaking ahead of this weekend’s race at Imola, Norris explained: “I never meant it to be put in that way or taken out of context in a bad way, especially against Lewis.

“I saw how it was going down [on social media] and I felt bad because it’s not the person I am in any way, to not have respect, so I made a decision in the morning to put out a tweet, issue my apology and message Lewis at the same time to set the record straight.

“I apologised to Lewis. I don’t know if he knew about it at the time, but I never meant to say something like that in a bad way or put any bad light on him. I respect everything he has done, it’s incredible, no matter what.”

Following a disappointing 13th-place finish at Portimão after colliding with Lance Stroll, a clearly frustrated Norris said of Hamilton's feat that "he's in a car that should win every race basically. He has to beat one or two other drivers, that's it. Fair play to him, he's still doing the job he has to do, but just another win for him."

Norris had also hit out at Stroll, calling him a highly-derogatory term over the team radio and continuing to vent his anger after the race, describing the Canadian as someone who crashes a lot, and who never learns.

But while Norris moved to throttle back on his criticism of both, he conceded he still likes to voice his opinion and is almost certain to make such comments again in the future.

“In 2020, you have to be very careful with what you think,” he said. “As much as I like voicing my own opinion, and that’s what I did, in a lot of ways, I maybe just didn’t pick the right wording for everything I said.

“I still have my opinions, some people are not going to like them, some people are, and that’s just the world we live in. No matter what you say, people can take it in a bad context and publicise it in a way to make it look a lot worse.”

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