Lando Norris highlights 'wrong decision' after Oscar Piastri crash

Lando Norris has explained the wrong decision he made in Azerbaijan Grand Prix qualifying, after team-mate Oscar Piastri's costly crash. 

Piastri crashed at Turn 3 during Q3 and will start ninth on the grid, leaving the door open for Norris to qualify well to eat into the 31-point lead the Australian holds in the drivers' standings.

Norris elected to go out first on the sole laps drivers could complete after Piastri's crash, and was the first to cross the line, ending up third. 

However, those behind then bumped him down to seventh, meaning there are only two places between the title contenders on the grid. 

Explaining, Norris was defiant that he had not wasted an opportunity to catch Piastri as he explained the decision to go first.

"No, because I still did everything I could," Norris firmly told media, including RacingNews365, if he had wasted an opportunity given Piastri's crash. 

"If I had won every race, I could have been world champion by now, but I didn't, so no. They were tricky conditions, and I went out first, and it was just the wrong decision to make at the end. 

"If everyone else got a yellow behind because someone went off behind me, you wouldn't be asking me this question. Sometimes it goes your way around here, sometimes it doesn't, and we thought we took the best option, and it would have been it if it wasn't spitting with rain.

"It just started to spit again before the final run, and then going out first is just the incorrect thing, but today, I struggled more because of making the best decision, but that's the hindsight thing, not an incorrect one at the time. 

"I wanted to go out first."

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Turns 3 and 4 were a hotspot for incidents, with Nico Hulkenberg and Franco Colapinto causing red flags at Turn 4 before Piastri's smash.

Detailing just how tricky conditions were at the sequence, Norris explained how the wind-speed made "Turn 4 felt like one of the worst corners I've ever driven in my life."

"It was quite incredible, I wish everyone could understand how difficult it was with the wind, because half the crashes you saw were probably because of the wind, but not all," he said. 

"Some of them are braking too late, and trying to go for something which is not there, but Turn 4 felt like one of the worst corners I've ever driven in my life.

"The tail wind was like 50kph, and it might be that the next lap, it is 10kph, so you are like: 'Oh, I can go quicker' and then you are in the wall, so it is difficult.

"That's why you want a car which is consistent and forgiving, and maybe we just struggled with that a little bit."