Coulthard tears into McLaren ‘excuses’ after ‘naïve’ Verstappen v Norris approach

David Coulthard puts the blame squarely on his former team McLaren for how the Lando Norris vs Max Verstappen US GP scrap played out.

The title protagonists Verstappen and Norris twice found themselves taking to the COTA run-off in combat, first at Turn 1 and again at Turn 12, as Norris tried to go around the outside of Verstappen for the final podium position. There were no repercussions for what occurred at the start, but Norris received a five-second penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage at T12.

DC tells McLaren ‘join a long line of people who complain and make excuses’

That penalty could prove critical in Norris’ title hopes as it dropped him back behind Verstappen, who stretched his lead to 57 points, with both McLaren team principal Andrea Stella and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff criticising the stewards, who earlier in the race added five seconds to George Russell’s time after the Mercedes driver was judged to have forced Valtteri Bottas off at T12.

However, Coulthard has no time for McLaren’s complaints.

“My position was that whoever is ahead at what I define as the apex, has the right to control the corner,” said Coulthard on the Formula For Success podcast.

“And if I put myself on the outside of Michael [Schumacher], right, what do I think is going to happen? If I’m slightly behind and I put myself on the outside, he’s going to push me off the track. Of course he is. That’s exactly what Max is going to do. The fact that Max then ran a little bit beyond the white line, actually, the point at which you are when you arrive at the apex, is what defines it.

“In the case of George, who was given the penalty, he was behind as they went through the apex, and then took a wider line, which forced the other car wide. So that’s why he was given the penalty.

“So for me, it’s absolutely clear, and I think that McLaren made a mistake in not saying to Lando, ‘Give the place back, pass him somewhere else’, because he had the pace to do it.

“And then complaining afterwards, ‘Oh, there’s rules for one, there’s rules for another’, join a long line of people who complain and make excuses. You count the winners by the chequered flag, assuming there’s no penalties afterwards.

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“So, I think it was a brilliant bit of aggressive, strategic understanding of the rules by Max, and it was a slightly naïve position from McLaren.

“And Lando, on the in-lap I believe, and I can’t say word for word, kind of asked: ‘Why didn’t we give the place back?’ He was in the car present, but he was, at the moment, trusting in what the team were saying, and trusting in the fact that they’d both gone off, so therefore he should be able to keep the position. But of course, he doesn’t know the relative placing of the cars as they ran through the apex.”

Formula 1 now moves on to this weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix, a race which Verstappen has won in five of the last six times the event has been run.

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