Coming up short at the Japanese Grand Prix, Lando Norris concedes that while the race was decided by qualifying, McLaren “probably should have” tried a different strategy to beat Max Verstappen.

Verstappen put in an “insane” lap at the Suzuka circuit to claim pole position with a lap record of 1:26.983, 0.012s ahead of Norris.

Lando Norris: I think I could have gone longer…

Such was the competition between the Red Bull driver and the McLarens, the gap from Verstappen in first to Oscar Piastri in third was a measly 0.044s.

But lining up on the grid on Sunday for the 53-lap Japanese Grand Prix, McLaren were tipped to take it in a two-pronged attack against Verstappen.

They didn’t, getting it so wrong that Jacques Villeneuve, commentating for Sky F1, said: “It’s as if they’re trying to not win. You need a winning attitude when you want to win. You need to want to win. You cannot just be on the defensive.

“Panicking, being afraid of are you doing what might be right.”

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The 1997 World Champion criticism related to McLaren’s decision to copy Verstappen’s strategy.

Although they initially tried to dummy Red Bull by calling Norris in to “box to overtake Verstappen” only to tell him to stay out, Piastri then pitted with Verstappen in the next lap to cover off the undercut. But instead of keeping Norris out, he followed Verstappen down the pit lane.

“Why would you stop Norris when your team-mate has already stopped? Why won’t you take a gamble? You have two drivers out there,” questioned Villeneuve.

Verstappen went on to take the win by 1.4s ahead of Norris with Piastri a further seven-tenths down on his team-mate.

Norris concedes McLaren “probably” should have done something different to Verstappen.

“I probably should have tried to undercut, I think,” said the championship leader. “The thing is there’s always the Safety Car risk and so forth. I think I could have gone longer because I don’t think I would have lost position, so that wasn’t off the cards.

“I think we probably should have just tried to run the card and then tried something different. But it just wasn’t. So yeah, things we’ll talk about.

“Honestly, I think the undercut is not easy here because the hard [tyre] is not mega in the first sector. So whether that even would have worked, I’m unsure.

“And Max still always had a little buffer to me. So even if I did have a good out lap, I don’t think it was enough to probably get past anyway.”

“Maybe we could have tried a bit more with strategy,” he added. “Overcut or undercut, we just boxed on the same lap for some reason.

“So some things we’ll discuss.

“But good points for us as a team. Decent points for me. Of course, would have liked a little bit more, but have to take second sometimes.”

Despite his runner-up result, Norris retained the lead in the Drivers’ Championship although he is now just a point ahead of Verstappen. Piastri is third, 13 points off the pace.

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