Lando Norris’s engine blew flames that he smelt in the cockpit. His race was finished, and he fell 34 points behind the winner of the Dutch Grand Prix, Oscar Piastri.
‘I might be on fire,’ reported Norris, in the SOS of the day, perhaps of the season.
Norris then sat on a dune at the side of the track in Zandvoort, disconsolate. He waved faintly to the fans after he picked himself up for the walk to the paddock and the longer trek back into title contention.
There are still nine rounds remaining, but the sense of a serious incineration to his title aspirations was hard to dispel as soon as soon smoke flickered at the rear of his McLaren with seven laps remaining and him lying second.
His race engineer Will Joseph tried to console him, telling his crestfallen charge how quick he had been. It was cold comfort.
This was a bad afternoon for another Brit by the North Sea, as Lewis Hamilton crashed out, picking up the debris of his Ferrari front wing from the grass a third of the way in.
Oscar Piastri picked up his seventh win of the Formula One season at the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday afternoon
Piastri’s team-mate Lando Norris (pictured) was forced to retire following an engine failure
A dejected Norris jumped out of his car and sat on a grassy verge on the edge of the race track as he fell 34 points behind his team-mate in the Drivers’ Standings
This is a season horribilis for the seven-time world champion, yet this was his first retirement of a podium-less year – another landmark as welcome as scurvy.
Hamilton came into the weekend saying how he wanted to have ‘fun’, hoping to shake off his recent torment following a restorative summer break. It did not turn out that way. He qualified seventh behind team-mate Charles Leclerc – who was later to crash out himself – and then came his mistake at Turn 3.
Known as Hugenholtzbocht, it is banked 18ft and requires precision handling. Hamilton lost control, perhaps caused by spots of rain. He tottered on the paint at the top of the corner, and ended up in the wall with his front right tyre taking the brunt. Asked if he was OK, he answered meekly: ‘Yeah. I’m so sorry guys.’
And then he trudged back to the Ferrari sanctuary, scene of more inquests in recent months than a coroner’s court.
He had been lying seventh and had asked for an undercut to pass Mercedes’ George Russell. Otherwise, he would likely have been following his old team-mate around all afternoon.
What he would have given for that luxury, given his premature decline.
There was the promise of rain over the radio but if a few splashes fell it was no more than drizzle.
The die was cast against Norris on Saturday with Piastri’s pole. Norris was 0.012sec back, a margin so small it is almost beyond comprehension, yet as big Everest in what it meant for the season’s two protagonists’ prospects.
Piastri (second from left) had total command and never faltered in exerting it to beat Max Verstappen (left), that weekly conjurer of rabbits, into second place. Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar (second from right) finished third
Norris opened up on his frustrations following the race, but added ‘I’ll take it on the chin and move on’
Norris admitted he needed magic to make things work for him. He targeted a good start.
Instead, he lost a place on the first lap. Max Verstappen, the home favourite, whizzed past him but he was held up by Piastri on the outside of the opening corner. But, refusing to lie down and keen to exert the zip his soft tyres conferred, Verstappen passed Norris at the second corner. Not without a heart-in-mouth moment, though.
The Dutchman ran on to the grass and just held on. His fans let out a sigh of relief. It was never going to last and, as his Red Bull’s soft tyres lost their extra speed, Norris bravely regained second spot around Turn One with the help of DRS down the start straight on the ninth of 72 laps.
It was never exactly easy for Piastri, but he had total command and never faltered in exerting it to beat Verstappen, that weekly conjurer of rabbits, into second place. Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar finished third, the French rookie’s maiden podium aged just 20. Chapeau!
The other main incident of the race came on lap 53, at just the spot where Hamilton had come to grief. It was Leclerc’s undoing this time after he had survived a bumping of wheels in a frisky pas-de-deux with Russell.
He was under attack from Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli. The 19-year-old was running below Leclerc, who was gripping the top of the banking. Antonelli pushed right and up around the left-hander and caught Leclerc, who had nowhere to go but into a car-mangled retirement.
He spun across the track and ended up in a stricken car on the other side of the road from where Hamilton had departed the scene. Leclerc climbed out and perched himself on a sandbank to watch the race continue without him.
A terrible day for poor Antonelli, who has been thrown in too young and raw by Mercedes. The stewards awarded him a 10-second penalty for causing the collision by going in hotter than Tabasco. The censure went with his five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane – the ultimate schoolboy error – and he finished 16th to Russell’s fourth place.
A word of congratulation for Ollie Bearman, Haas’s 20-year-old Essex boy who finished sixth, his best finish having started 19th, albeit helped by the race inclining to his strategy.
The safety car came out for both accidents. McLaren double-stacked their men on each occasion. Piastri was well at the restarts both times.
Norris was angry with his team that they had not forewarned him of the rain blobs that perhaps caught out Hamilton, calling it potentially race-ending information.
That was long before his engine went pop, rendering all warnings superfluous. It was game over. For now, at the very least.
