Ruth Buscombe reacts to Lando Norris’ engineer unexpected remarks after Dutch GP setback

Former F1 engineer Ruth Buscombe, speaking on F1TV, compared Norris’ DNF and Lewis Hamilton’s retirement at the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix.

That incident occurred during another intra-team title fight, this time between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. However, in that case, Hamilton was leading when his engine failed.

He left Sepang 23 points behind and could not close the gap over the final five races. Norris faces a larger deficit, but with nine Grands Prix and three Sprints remaining, he has more opportunities to recover.

Buscombe observed that it was almost Norris who found himself comforting his McLaren engineer. Will Joseph apologized, repeatedly assuring his driver of his exceptional speed throughout the race.

“It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?” she said.

“You can tell when your race engineer… we’re supposed to be the boring, cool ones. When you hear the heartbreak in Will Joseph’s voice as well, it’s almost Lando consoling him.

“It was really reminiscent to me of the Malaysia DNF in 2016 of Lewis Hamilton. It’s still a reliability game. We have these four power units [allocated for the season], and it all comes down to these micro details.

“You hope that’s not the defining element of the championship, don’t you?”

Andrea Stella says what Lando Norris fans are hoping to hear

After the race, Piastri described Norris as ‘incredibly unfortunate’, another moment that reflected the team spirit McLaren has been building over time.

Team boss Andrea Stella said that after the race, Norris told his team to focus on what’s ahead and not dwell on the setback, already shifting attention to making up ground in the championship.

Norris needs to avoid exchanging victories with Piastri. The Briton has only put together back-to-back victories once this season, but now he needs a run of strong results if he is going to close that gap.

Ralf Schumacher suggested that Norris might actually benefit from this retirement. In his view, the pressure is now squarely on Piastri to turn his lead into a title.