Lando Norris climbed from eighth to fifth place during the French Grand Prix. The overtaking of Pierre Gasly on the twenty-eighth lap was not without controversy. The Brit even called his French colleague an idiot.
During the overtake at Le Beausset, Norris was cut off by Gasly with both drivers going off track for a moment. “He forced me off. What is this idiot doing? He went off himself”, Norris complained on the board radio. In the end Norris managed to overtake successfully one lap later.
Speaking at the press conference in Austria, Norris revealed that the hatchet has now been buried. “Well, after the race I wasn’t too unhappy. I finished ahead of him, so I was actually quite happy,” the Official website of Formula 1. Although, of course, during the race it wasn’t like that. “My front wing was almost off. It was just not necessary, I thought, the level of aggression he had. But I have nothing against him.”
Gasly also looks back on the incident, but he too sees no further problems with Norris. “In the heat of the moment you sometimes say things on the radio. It’s part of racing, hopefully we’ll have more fights this season and I enjoyed it. There was no harm in the action and I wouldn’t mind another fight with him this weekend.”
Beyond that, the Frenchman doesn’t really want to mince words. “I think it was a nice, hard race. We always complain that we don’t have any overtakes in Formula 1, so I think you should be happy when there are and that’s about it.”
