Lando Norris took the blame upon himself after being caught out by a sudden bottleneck behind the Safety Car, as RaceFans reports. The McLaren driver came dangerously close to piling into the back of his team mate Oscar Piastri as the train of cars approached turn one. The chaos unfolded after George Russell ground to a sudden halt on the right-hand side of the track near the pit lane entrance, catching the following field completely by surprise.
Norris explained that his view of the unfolding blockage ahead was severely compromised from his position in the queue. He noted that while he saw the Mercedes slowing down, judging the actual speeds of the cars directly in front proved nearly impossible in the moment. When they were crawling along at a mere ten kilometres per hour, the McLaren driver found himself completely overrun by the sudden check-up.
The resulting avoidance maneuver saw Norris narrowly dodge a collision with Piastri before sliding off onto the gravel trap on the outside. He managed to rejoin the queue, though the excursion cost him several positions in the process. Stewards quickly took notice, summoning the driver for driving erratically under Safety Car conditions, leaving the track and re-joining unsafely, and overtaking another car behind the Safety Car.
Norris did not attempt to hide from his responsibility once the dust settled. As he put it simply, he got completely caught out and figured it was his fault at the end of the day, having simply been unlucky with how much everyone checked up.
Meanwhile, the stewards' attention was not limited to the McLaren garage. Alexander Albon of Williams also found himself under investigation for a separate incident involving Piastri during an earlier Safety Car deployment. Albon appeared to slow down while following his team mate Carlos Sainz Jnr into the pits, forcing Piastri to take evasive action once again.
