F1 News
Windsor unhappy with the FIA after Norris penalty: "Robbed of a good race"
Peter Windsor was critical of the FIA and race control at the Qatar Grand Prix, saying that their decision-making meant viewers were "robbed of a really good race" after Lando Norris was given a ten-second stop-and-go penalty. That penalty put the McLaren driver all the way to the back of the grid, and although he did right his way back up to P10, it completely ruined his race.
Norris managed to get past George Russell into P2 on the race start, and although Max Verstappen looked like he was going to coast to victory out in front, as the race went on, the McLaren driver looked to be reeling in the Dutchman. However, a broken wing mirror from Alex Albon's Williams lay in the middle of the start-finish straight, and after Valtteri Bottas ran over it and sent debris all over the circuit, both Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz got punctures for running over the broken mirror.
There were calls for a virtual safety car to have been imposed to pick up the stricken mirror, but that did not come, resulting in Hamilton and Sainz puncturing their tyres. Due to debris all over the track, yellow flags came out, but Norris did not slow down enough under them, and that was the reason for his ten-second stop-and-go penalty. He was forced to serve it within three laps, and that ended his chances of battling for the win.
Windsor criticises "confusion" at race control
Speaking on his YouTube channel after the race, Windsor stated that race control did not act properly with the yellow flags when the broken mirror from Albon's car lay on the track: "I think, 'Just get on with it'. It's only a mirror on the pit straight. They're so paranoid now about having anyone on the track. Okay, I kind of get that. You can't just have one rule for one corner, one part of the road, or indeed one circuit, one rule for another. So let's assume that you cannot have a human being on the track. Why didn't they just put out a virtual safety car and have the cars go slowly down the pit straight whilst the marshal went in and picked up that mirror, waiting for somebody to go over it?"
Windsor therefore does not understand how the yellow flags were handled: "We had a lot of confusion. The lights on the safety car didn't work well either. As a result of all that, Norris got a penalty for going too quickly behind in the yellows. I think they should not have done that on that day when so many things are going wrong for the FIA in terms of administration."
The analyst continued, "I think we were robbed of a really good race because Lando had the pace. I think he probably had a quicker car and for proof of that I think look at the restart when they're all on hard tyres."
This article was created in collaboration with Cas van de Kleut
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