Lando Norris could be left red-faced after confidently claiming Sergio Perez would be hit with a penalty for impeding him during Las Vegas Grand Prix qualifying.
Norris, who was unable to advance from Q1 along with his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri, complained about Perez over his team radio during qualifying.
“Ah, I got blocked. He completely got in my way,” he said to his engineers. The 24-year-old later went on to insist that the Red Bull driver would be punished for his actions following his hugely disappointing showing in qualifying.
Asked about what happened, Norris told Sky Sports: “He impeded me. What else am I going to say? He was in the way.” The McLaren star was then asked if he expected any repercussions for Checo and replied: “He’ll get a penalty. If he doesn’t then ha,” before laughing.
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However, Norris, who will be starting Sunday’s Grand Prix 15th on the grid, might have gotten ahead of himself because the incident has seemingly not even been investigated by the FIA stewards.
A potential grid penalty for Perez would’ve only rubbed salt in the wounds with the Mexican once again struggling in qualifying and failing to make it through to Q3 for the ninth time this season. Fortunately for the under-pressure Perez, Lewis Hamilton – who he is battling it out with for second spot in the Drivers’ World Championship – also failed to advance to Q3 and is only starting one place ahead of him on the grid in P10 on Sunday.
Perez had already felt frustrated at the end of qualifying and confirmed he would be holding internal talks with the team after the decision not to complete a second run at the end of Q2 cost him.
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Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner also confirmed that the decision was made due to the team only bringing three sets of tyres. Speaking afterwards, Perez said: “That was basically our strategy from the beginning. It’s obviously a new track and it caught us out, unfortunately.
“It’s something we will discuss internally to understand what happened. We were unlucky in Q1, managed to get through. Plenty of things to analyse from that.”
He added: “It will be an interesting race, there are a lot of things that can happen. We will see.”
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