Lando Norris believes McLaren did “nothing wrong” with his tactics following an unhappy radio message in which he said he’d been “screwed over by the strategy”.

Norris ended the first lap of the race in seventh place but took the chequered flag out of the points. He fell behind Daniel Ricciardo when he pitted after the Renault driver in the Safety Car period, then lost more places with his second pit stop later in the race.

“We made the wrong decision under the Safety Car,” said Norris. “We didn’t box when we should have done.

“[We were] not gambling but just hoping a few more people won’t drop off like Alex [Albon] did at the end. But it didn’t happen.

“Just in hindsight the strategy was the wrong thing but it’s not something we could have known as easily when we made the decision. I still stand by the team, they did nothing wrong, we just didn’t make the right choice at the end of the day.”

The McLaren driver admitted his car’s poor race pace also contributed to his point-less finish.

“Our pace was quite poor, I thought, compared to Renault. They could follow pretty closely around the whole track and not be that badly affected so the pace was much better from the Renaults.

“So we’ve got a lot of work to do I think. They had the quicker car today and obviously we want to be quicker than them. So we’ll go back, take a quick journey home, analyse everything and make sure we come back strong.”

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Norris’s team radio message

To Norris: OK Lando were trying to work it out. We’ve just got Ricciardo behind which makes it difficult. Norris: It’s OK. I got screwed over by the strategy so… To Norris: So dude It was a very poorly timed Safety Car but there’s still 23 laps to go, there’s still lots to play for here, so lets keep it up.

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2019 F1 season