Lando Norris admitted delaying his pit stop in the Belgian Grand Prix was probably a mistake as it dropped him too far behind his team mate.

Oscar Piastri won the race after passing Norris at the start, then pitting to switch to slick tyres a lap before him. The time Norris lost doing one more lap on a drying track on his worn intermediates, plus the additional cost of a slightly slow pit stop, extended Piastri’s lead from just under two seconds to more than nine.

Norris admitted he would have probably been better off pitting on the same lap as Piastri, and losing time behind him at the McLaren pit box, than incurring the greater delay of doing another lap on his intermediates.

“I need to ask the team,” he said after the race. “It’s tough because you’re going to lose quite a good chunk of time doing that as well.”

“It was a late call for us to box on that lap. I think if we review it, we probably would have kicked ourselves a little bit for staying out as long as we did.”

Piastri pitted on lap 12. Four other drivers pitted on the lap before him, beginning with Lewis Hamilton, who gained six places with his early tyre change.

“I think there was enough evidence that we should have boxed early, but no one boxed that early,” Norris continued. “It was just that Lewis boxed one lap earlier than us.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and

“It was more painful for me that Oscar got the good lap, I had to go one lap longer, that’s life.”

Norris said his race engineer Will Joseph took the lead on the decision to put him on a harder set of tyres than Piastri.

“Will asked do I want the hard tyre and I said yes. That was about it. I didn’t even know Oscar was on the medium, to be honest, that didn’t influence my decision.

“I thought the hard tyre would be slightly better to the end, a bit trickier to get warmed up and the opening laps maybe would be a little bit more of a struggle, which I think it was. In the last few laps, I had the advantage in terms of grip.

“But it was not a great pit stop. I was the second one to stop, I think I lost eight, nine seconds just by being the second car to box. To catch Oscar from that gap is quite an achievement. I gave it a good shot, but just not close enough.”

Miss nothing from RaceFans

Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and

2025 Belgian Grand Prix

Browse all 2025 Belgian Grand Prix articles