By Alan Baldwin
SAKHIR, Bahrain (Reuters) -Red Bull should complain less about other teams and focus more on doing a better job with their own, according to McLaren’s Formula One championship leader Lando Norris.
Norris goes into this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix a point clear of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, winner in Japan last weekend, after three rounds.
McLaren ended Red Bull’s reign as world champions last season, although Verstappen took his fourth successive drivers’ title, and there has been plenty of talk about where their speed is coming from.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner has pointed to a coming technical directive (TD), clamping down on front wing flex, as a potential game-changer from race nine but Norris dismissed that.
“We’re all fully within the rules. We’re doing a good job. Red Bull have had plenty of time to do the same thing as us and they’re not,” he told British media reporters.
“It is more that they should do a better job rather than keep complaining about things,” added the Briton, who was runner-up to Verstappen last year.
“We respect the FIA doing what they’re doing and we’re happy that they keep trying to correct things because we don’t want anyone outside of those rules, but the last ones didn’t affect us,” he added.
“I don’t know if the new ones will or not but there are plenty of things that Red Bull do that also push the limits just as much. So we can also play that game, but … we focus on ourselves rather than complaining about others.”
Norris said people who judged from online videos were “a bit clueless.
“How do they know it’s the rear wing that’s flexing?,” he asked. “They don’t, it could be the whole car. So, you know, people can just come up with what they want but really they have absolutely no idea.”
Norris has finished second in his last two races, after winning the opener in Australia. In Japan, he tried to pass Verstappen on the grass at the pitlane exit in a move that ultimately failed.
McLaren were also criticised for not being aggressive enough on strategy, with two cars against one Red Bull — Verstappen’s new teammate Yuki Tsunoda being as far off the pace as predecessor Liam Lawson.
Norris said it was a balance in terms of when to attack and when to hold back. In retrospect he might have wanted to do things differently but the result might have been the same.
“Sometimes in a car, you want to be more aggressive and the team tries to calm you down, sometimes the team is on the safer approach and you want to be more aggressive,” he said.
“Last weekend, maybe I would have liked to have been a bit more aggressive. I might have got past, I might not have. I might have lost more time and got undercut. No things are guaranteed and there are reasons we do what we do sometimes.”
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ken Ferris)
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