McLaren to blame for Norris' lost win – Schumacher

Sep.28 (GMM) McLaren, not Lando Norris, is to blame for the lost victory at Sochi, according to a former grand prix winner.

Norris, having started the Russian GP from his first ever pole, was en route to victory until the Sochi skies began to open.

Radio messages from the 21-year-old indicated that Norris had simply refused to pit for rain tyres, and afterwards he admitted to race winner Lewis Hamilton that he had “ignored” the team.

However, team boss Andreas Seidl clarified: “If we had told him ‘Come in’, he would have come in.”

Former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher agrees that McLaren is more to blame than Norris.

“The fault was with the McLaren weather man,” he told Sky Deutschland.

“Seidl told us at Sky that they had assumed the rain would stay light and Norris had therefore been left out. The driver cannot help with that.

“If he had decided against his team, things would probably have turned out differently for him. But he just didn’t have the information that the team has.

“His team simply had the wrong information,” Schumacher added.