Lando Norris was left disappointed with “the worst start in my life” after a difficult Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Briton dropped down the field in the damp conditions starting eighth and could only recover to 13th as the highs of third and fifth in Austria were followed by a shuddering low.
“The team did a good job. Maybe the pit-stops weren’t amazing, but they didn’t cost me anything,” Norris said. post-race.
“I think I was the one who let down the team in terms of probably getting the worst start I’ve ever got in my life.
“I just wanted to go forwards, and when you try to go forwards in the wet you go backwards. It was as simple as that.
“I just screwed everything up, and it’s such a difficult track to overtake on that I couldn’t do anything more after that. I tried coming back, but P13 was the best I could do.”
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With the track quickly drying, the two Haas drivers made the bold move to pit in on the formation lap for slicks, a decision that saw them run third and fourth early on at one point.
But team boss Andreas Seidl explained why that wasn’t an option McLaren considered.
“The further you are up on the grid, the more confidence you have in your own pace,” he said. “Obviously, it takes the appetite away to go for big gambling, which Haas clearly did.
“From our point of view, where we started, we were in a good position to score good points purely down to our own pace as long as we were pretty much the same as the other cars around us, so there was no appetite to gamble.”
Norris was later pictured helping his McLaren team disassemble the car for the trip back to Britain.
And reflecting on the opening tripleheader, which sees him currently fourth in the Drivers’ standings, the 21-year-old was still satisfied.
“If I look at the big picture I think they’ve still been a very positive three weeks,” he added.
“I think the things I’ve really wanted to improve on as a driver, I’ve done much better at, but I’m still not the driver I want to be.
“I still made the mistake today, which probably didn’t cost me a huge amount of points so not the end of the world.
“But in the long run, you want to be scoring whenever you have the opportunity to, and I think today we had the opportunity to get one or two, which could prove quite costly come the end of the season.”
McLaren did at least add two more points to their total thanks to Carlos Sainz, who was promoted to ninth after the Haas cars were penalised pst-race.