Stella said the team was “very surprised” that Norris was penalised for unsportsmanlike behaviour after being deemed to have created a gap to his team-mate Oscar Piastri prior to a double-stacked pit stop.
Norris was running behind the Australian when a safety car triggered by George Russell’s accident gave drivers an opportunity to make cheap stops. McLaren duly decided to double stack and pit both cars on the same lap.
The rules explicitly prevent drivers from going too slowly in the pit lane in order to create a gap if they are double stacking behind their team-mate.
However in this case Norris was reported for going too slowly on the track on the run from the hairpin back to the pit entry, thus holding up Alex Albon, who was just behind him and also intending to stop.
In their investigation, the stewards took note of McLaren’s radio traffic. While there was no smoking gun in terms of Norris being told directly to back off, it was deemed that the team had in effect given enough information, including the time gap to Piastri, for Norris to know what he had to do.
Norris was told “Lando, safety car, safety car. You are the second car, you are the second car. Oscar three.”
The stewards had the option to invoke the driving unnecessarily slowly rule, but instead, they referenced the International Sporting Code and the section that reads “any infringement of the principles of fairness in competition, behaviour in an unsportsmanlike manner or attempt to influence the results of a competition, in a way that is contrary to sporting ethics”.
They decided to hand Norris a five-second penalty that ultimately proved very expensive as it dropped him from ninth on the road to 13th in the final classification.
Source: Autosport