Lando Norris issues 'idiotic' statement after McLaren controversy

Lando Norris has discussed McLaren's controversial team orders between himself and his Formula 1 team-mate Oscar Piastri at the Australian Grand Prix.

Despite having the chance of a home win, Piastri was told by the team to not overtake Norris for a period where he was faster than the British driver.

Team boss Zak Brown had said on Sky Sports just a handful of laps earlier that the pair would be allowed to race if the Australian caught up to his team-mate, before that immediately appeared to be proven wrong.

Speaking ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix, Norris claimed he wasn't aware that his team-mate had been instructed not to go all out against him, but defended the decision as being specifically for the period when the pair were passing lapped cars.

Norris 'didn't know' about McLaren team orders

“I didn’t know they said that to Oscar," he said. "And they said it for two or three laps  when we were overtaking lapped cars in tricky conditions . We would have looked like idiots if we had tried to race and gone off track because of it.

"It was for a couple of laps when they asked him to hold the position, but we have the freedom to drive and race, it was just for those three laps of overtaking lapped cars.

"I’m sure we’ll talk more about it, and it was in the best interest and good of the team. McLaren thought we were first and second and shouldn’t do anything stupid that we didn’t need to, and there was still plenty of time for Oscar to be racing. But it was difficult or stupid to force a situation when you were overtaking cars and if you went off the line you ended up in the wall at that stage of the race."

He added: "At that point I was mostly thinking about keeping the tires until lap 50, and Oscar was pushing a bit harder to catch me. But it was all good on my part."

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