Lando Norris defiant after missing major chance against 'incredible' Oscar Piastri

Lando Norris is defiant that he is "doing the best I can" after missing a golden opportunity to eat into Oscar Piastri's points lead.

After Piastri crashed out on the first lap of the Azerbaijan GP, the day after a qualifying accident, Norris was presented with the chance to massively reduce the 31-point buffer Piastri held, but could only finish seventh, earning himself six points.

This reduced Piastri's lead to 25 points, with the Australian losing fewer points to Norris (six) than if he had finished second to Norris in the race (seven).

There are 199 points remaining in the season, but Norris firmly rejected the idea that he had missed the opportunity to turn up the pressure on Piastri with his lowly performance.

"I am doing the best I can in every race, and if you think like that, every race I finished second or worse this year was an opportunity lost," Norris told media, including RacingNews365, when asked if Baku was an opportunity missed.

"So I don't really care how people look at it, of course I wanted to do better [in Baku], but I needed to do better [in qualifying], but we went out first and this was just our decision and we paid the price for that.

"But I could have ended up in the wall or gone long and something worse could have happened, but I felt close to maximising [the car in the Baku race], although it may not have looked like it from the outside.

"I am doing the best I can, and I know I've still got a lot of points to make up against a pretty good, incredible driver, so I just need to keep my head down."