Lando Norris attitude problem identified after McLaren star snaps at ally

Lando Norris’ attitude has been criticised at the Singapore Grand Prix after a tense exchange with his F1 race engineer Will Joseph.

The McLaren star’s race weekend in Singapore started off with chaos, when Charles Leclerc was released into the path of Norris in the pit lane, a mistake which sent the Brit into the wall.

Norris was then wheeled back to the McLaren garage, where repairs were made to a damaged front wing and he returned to the racetrack.

After the incident however, Norris was unable to set a time fast enough to top the session, with that honour instead going to team-mate Oscar Piastri, while Norris only managed P5.

Towards the end of the session, Norris’ race engineer Joseph suggested: “It’s up to you but I can probably make the car quicker if we do laps without DRS.”

Reluctant to try that, Norris replied: “Yeah but my car’s not half a second off is it my driving’s off.”

Norris’ attitude criticised

Norris’ attitude was then criticised after FP2 on the Sky Sports F1 broadcast, where 2009 champion Jenson Button said: “I don’t understand that whatsover,” in reference to Joesph’s promise to make the car quicker.

“What really was more telling was Lando’s attitude and how he just seemed so down.”

Sky F1’s Anthony Davidson also assessed the driver’s attitude, adding: “He’s not happy with the car. Lando’s quite guilty of this, typically he’s quick to blame himself before he will work on the car or look at the data. He feels like he can take it on his own shoulders… I feel like in that moment he wasn’t necessarily working well with his engineer to make life easier for himself with the car being more to his liking.”

“Maybe he was a bit rattled from what happened in the pit lane, obviously that wasn’t the plan. Sometimes it can knock you off guard but you’ve got to reset yourself and I feel like he got a bit flustered from that moment and then your team-mate goes and sets the fastest time and flusters you even more.”

“He kind of refused to follow the programme that his engineer felt like, ‘well I can work with the car if you maybe give me more data to go by rather than maybe a lap you didn’t quite optimise… give me a chance to work on a car, I can make it better for you.’”

Speaking to Sky Sports’ Ted Kravitz after the session, Norris continued to project a downcast attitude, where he said: “Just a difficult day for me – not feeling too great with the car, missing all of the feelings that I had here last year. Plenty of things to work on. Just a bad day.”

Norris's luck did not improve much on Saturday, qualifying only fifth at Marina Bay.

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