The accident between Lando Norris and Oscar Piatri last Sunday was by no means decisive. According to the crash he has debt, the Brit is now 22 points behind its teammate. In theory, however, this gap can still be made up in just one race.
For many experts, there is therefore not the (still manageable) gap from Norris in the driver’s World Cup – but its error rate. Because the accident in Montreal was not the first mistake with which Norris brought about valuable meters this season.
“Lando seems to have weekends that are absolutely dominant, like Melbourne and Monaco, or everything just falls apart,” expert Martin Brundle observed. And “unfortunately” Canada was a race from the second category, said Brundle at “Sky”.
“This does not mean that he is out of the championship,” he clarifies, “but if you look at the change in the points, from the lead with which he came from Melbourne, to the deficit he has now, then this is a difference of 45 points at this time.”
Norris starts strongly – and then leaves strongly
Because Norris won the season start in Melbourne from pole position. And because his teammate was only ninth there after a mistake, Norris left Australia with a lead of 23 points – from which now has become 22 points behind.
Piatri has been leading the World Cup in Saudi Arabia since the fifth run, where Norris crashes in qualifying and, in addition to Canada, made its biggest and most expensive mistake to date. And apart from that, Norris has always been negligent.
In Bahrain, for example, he acted an unnecessary time penalty because he stood too far in his start box at the start, and he made mistakes in qualifying in several races and thus brought himself into a poor starting point for the race.
This also happened to him in Canada, where he only qualified as a seventh – and then crashed with Piatri in the race. Brundle therefore emphasizes: “Lando will not win a World Cup if he cannot prevent these weekends.