"It's not very clean driving": Lando Norris unimpressed by Max Verstappen's defensive tactics

F1 Grand Prix of Mexico - Source: Getty
F1 Grand Prix of Mexico - Source: Getty

Lando Norris was not impressed by Max Verstappen's defensive tactics in the F1 Mexican GP and said it was not very clean racing. The McLaren driver and the Red Bull driver once again battled in the race.

It happened early in the race and once again it was contentious. In his first defense, Max Verstappen pushed Lando Norris off-track, which meant the McLaren driver once again came out ahead of the Red Bull driver. The second move saw Max Verstappen push Lando Norris off the track and gain an advantage by going off-track himself.

These penalties meant that the Red Bull driver was given two separate 10-second time penalties. These penalties put Verstappen out of contention and resulted in the driver finishing the race in P6.

Lando Norris, on his part, made his way to P2 in the race ahead of Charles Leclerc. The McLaren driver was questioned about the move made by Verstappen, and the driver admitted that it was not clean driving. In the post-race scrum, he said,

"I knew what to expect [with Max]. I didn't want to expect that kind of thing because I respect Max a lot as a driver, but I was ready to expect something like this. It's not very clean driving, in my opinion, but I avoided it and it was a good race."

He added,

"I just keep my head down. I'm doing my best, we're doing a very good job as a team and today we were probably quickest in the end. We'll keep pushing."

Lando Norris looks back at his race post-Max Verstappen incident

Lando Norris looked back at his race with McLaren and felt he had a reason to be content with his result. Until Max Verstappen pitted for the first time, Norris was stuck behind him and lost a lot of time.

After the first pitstop sequence, Norris was more than 10 seconds behind the leader. From this point, the driver made his way up to only 5-6 seconds at the end from Carlos Sainz. Looking back at his race, he said,

"It was a very tough race. The first few laps, a lot of it was just trying to stay in the race and avoid any crashes. Carlos drove a very good race, so congratulations to him and Ferrari. I tried my best."

Max Verstappen, on the other hand, had a disastrous race. He could only make his way to P6 and would lose as many as 10 points this weekend. With four races left, the gap now between the Red Bull and the McLaren driver is 47 points.

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Edited by Vaishnavi Iyer
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