Lando Norris has revealed that his loss of a possible win at the 2021 Formula 1 Russian Grand Prix was one of the "hardest things to get over". The McLaren driver had been leading the event at the Sochi Autodrom when heavy rain fell during the latter stages. While other drivers chose to pit for Intermediate tyres, Norris opted to stay out on slicks, despite struggling to keep his car on the track. He eventually made a pit stop but it was too late, resulting in a P7 finish for the Briton. Reflecting on how he handles a bad result, Norris told the Sky Sports F1 podcast that this is dependent on the situation.
Norris: When it's my mistake it's a lot worse
"It depends a little bit on the reason for the result," Norris explained. "If it's definitely through my own doing, it takes a lot longer to get over it. "If it's my mistake, whether I crash or spin or get a penalty, if it's 100 percent down to me or even 50 percent down to me, it's a lot worse than if it's just because we don't have the pace in the car or things like that. "It depends a lot on the situation we're in. Sochi 2021 was probably one of the hardest things to get over – not simply because of what happened but because of what we almost achieved. "It depends on how things happen, what it's for and so on."
How Norris' approach has changed
Now in his fifth season in F1, Norris feels that he has progressed in terms of how he deals with difficult weekends in the sport. "I'm a lot better now than what I was – I used to struggle a lot more back in 2019 and 2020," the 23-year-old continued. "Now I just look at it in a constructive way of learning what went wrong, how can you fix it, how can you be better at whatever the problem was and just try and move on."
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