Norris admits he “f***ed up” his start after letting Verstappen past

Lando Norris admitted he made a mistake by throwing away the lead at the start of the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

The pole-winner made a strong initial getaway and moved across to prevent Max Verstappen attacking him on the inside of the first corner.

However Norris brakes too deep into the first corner and ran wide. Verstappen passed him immediately while George Russell also got ahead of the McLaren on the following straight.

“I fucked it up,” Norris admitted during the post-race podium interview. “I just braked too late.”

Norris recovered to finish second and increased his points lead over his closest championship rival, Oscar Piastri. Despite the poor start to his race Norris was satisfied with his result.

“I’ve obviously had a good run,” he said. “I think the pace was still good today.

“Max just drove a good race and they were quick. I made the mistake into turn one. You’ve got to be punchy into turn one, I was just a bit too punchy and that cost me.

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“So that’s the way it is sometimes. It’s still a good result, second, and still good points, so it’s not like I’m too disappointed.”

However he admitted “it wasn’t my best performance out there” today. “When a guy wins by 20 seconds it’s because he’s just done a better job and they’re a bit quicker. So a fun race out there, difficult as always, but good fun.”

Norris doubts he would have won the race even if he’d kept his lead at the start. “They were just much quicker than us today,” he said. “Not miles, but we certainly had our issues, and that made the gap probably bigger than it was. But otherwise they were just quicker.

“Even if I came out of turn one ahead, I don’t think we would have won the race today. So I still take P2 as a good result. I’m pretty happy because of it.”

He believes McLaren have lost some of the advantage they previously had over a long stint. “Even when I thought I kept the tyres in a better condition than the others, kind of brought them in nicer, I was pushing flat-out, and Max was still pulling away,” he said. “So it seems like lately we’ve been able to improve our quali pace but our race pace has taken a bit of a hit.

“Even when you look at Brazil, our quali pace was very strong, but Max was still a little faster in the race. Similar this weekend, we were very, very good yesterday, incredibly strong yesterday, but just not good enough today. So we’ll see what’s maybe changed over the last few weeks and what we can improve on for Qatar.”

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