Lando Norris has conceded that he would have had no chance of contending for victory in Saturday's Montreal Sprint race had the two Mercedes cars ahead of him not been battling each other.
Mercedes Battle Opens Door for Norris
George Russell executed a superb getaway from pole position, while Kimi Antonelli also launched well enough to retain second place. It initially appeared as though the pair would pull clear of the field, with Norris already two and a half seconds behind the two Silver Arrows by the second lap.
However, Norris was handed a route back into contention when Antonelli made a bold overtaking attempt on his team-mate. The teenager felt he was forced off the circuit by Russell when he attempted to go around the outside into turn one.
Then, on the very same lap, Antonelli locked up again and ran off track at the turn eight chicane, causing him to bounce across the grass and lose considerable pace. This allowed Norris to close the gap and sweep past, immediately piling pressure on Russell.
Norris Reflects on Fortune
The Mercedes driver managed to keep his compatriot at bay to claim the Sprint victory, but Norris was comfortably clear of Antonelli for the majority of the race, apart from a late lunge which saw the Italian run off track once more and surrender the position back to the McLaren.
Reflecting on the events, Norris conceded he had been fortunate that the Mercedes drivers had held each other up, admitting he would have been nowhere near them otherwise. "It was certainly nice to be in that position, but I was only in that position because they battled," the defending drivers' champion said.
"If they didn't battle, I [would have been] 10 seconds behind. They were so much faster than us and we were lucky that they battled. I took advantage of it, but today showed that the three-tenths gap we had yesterday, even though it looked like we could close that, the pace they had in the race was just on another level compared to us. There are so many things we have to improve on, maybe into Monaco or Barcelona, hopefully."
Wolff's Perspective on Intra-Team Battle
As for the Mercedes duo, team principal Toto Wolff expressed hopes that his drivers had got it out of their systems and would stick to the internal rules of engagement agreed upon in this intra-team title battle. "You could see how quickly it goes. You create a gap with two cars and then you start to fight a bit, and you can lose a race," he said.
"If it goes on longer and it's a bit unlucky for us, and it's the Grand Prix, then Norris may well win. You don't want to lose a race because you crashed into each other. Sometimes it needs a little moment to remind ourselves what our objectives are."
"This is not particularly against one or the other, but there's a framework that we want to establish and I'd rather have it in a Sprint race, where it's not a lot of points, than in a main race. We don't want to start, at race five, to have headlines that this is escalating, because it's not. It's the emotion. He's a young driver and I think George would have probably done the same, so we just need to see how we handle it."
