Bahrain GP: Lando Norris wanted Valtteri Bottas ‘out of the race’

Bahrain GP: Lando Norris wanted Valtteri Bottas ‘out of the race’

Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo

Lando Norris had an outstanding start to the 2021 season, finishing P4 in the season opening race in Bahrain. The McLaren driver knew the Valtteri Bottas was facing a pit-stop difficulty and wanted him out of the race. Bottas faced a 10 second delay in a pit stop mishap that ruled out of contention for the top two spots, and could finish only third behind Lewis Hamilton (P1) and Max Verstappen (P2).

“I was hoping that was him out of the race, to be honest,” Lando said. “I don’t wish that upon anyone, obviously. I thought for a minute something might have been coming from it – last year started to flash back a little bit, but very happy with P4,” he added.

Lando Norris was happy with the car’s performance on Sunday and believes that the team needs to work harder to catch onto Red Bull and Mercedes.

“I think we had good pace, the car was nice and I was maintaining a good gap. It’s a good start to the season. Mercedes and Red Bull pulled away a lot but I passed the Ferrari [Charles Leclerc] cleanly on track on pure pace. We’ve got work to do, but for a first race I think we can be very happy with today,” he added.

Daniel Ricciardo pretty satisfied with Sunday’s performance

Daniel Ricciardo, Norris’ teammate at McLaren had a good outing for his new team. He was among the points after he finished on P7. The Australian stated that there were several things to work on but he was pretty satisfied with Sunday’s race.

“I think the weekend as a whole, pretty satisfied,” the Australian told Sky F1. “In the race I struggled with pace, I wouldn’t say it was a strong race by any means, but plenty to work on and learn from. Definitely not discouraged but still some work to do. “As the race went on I felt like I was falling back and back and just struggled to push on the tyres,” he added.

He feels he can make greater progress here at McLaren then he could make at Renault, where he was still getting used to the car after race two.

“This feels like very familiar territory from two years ago, but even then I felt still quite deflated after race two,” he added. I felt I still had a lot to learn with the new car at Renault. Here, I don’t feel as off the mark as much and I feel this process will be faster,” he added.

Also Read: Bahrain GP: “Valtteri Bottas was used as a pawn during the race,” claims former F1 champion