Christian Horner’s Lando Norris ‘lucky bastard’ quip after Singapore GP incidents

Lando Norris took a comfortable victory at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner quipped that Lando Norris was a “lucky bastard” to avoid significant damage in the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday.

Norris scraped the barriers on two occasions while leading comfortably from Max Verstappen, and ran deep at Turn 16 while lapping Franco Colapinto’s Williams in the race the drivers describe as the most physically and mentally demanding of the season.

Christian Horner makes Lando Norris quip after Singapore GP scrapes

The McLaren driver lost three seconds of his healthy lead to Verstappen on one lap after locking up at the Turn 13 hairpin, making contact with the outside wall and getting away with minor front wing damage.

He also clipped the barrier under braking at the left-hander of Turn 10 – the scene of George Russell’s last-lap retirement last season – which prompted the Red Bull team principal to joke that “somebody is smiling” on Norris after not sustaining more damage.

The topic of Norris brushing the walls was brought up by reporters in Singapore, and that Horner had brought that up with Verstappen on team radio on the in-lap.

When asked if that was to inform Verstappen that Norris had been making mistakes in the race, Horner responded with a joke: “It was to show him he [Norris] was a lucky bastard!

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“Hitting the wall once is usually a wake-up call, and to hit it twice, somebody is smiling on you.”

Nevertheless, the Briton’s victory in Singapore was comprehensive over Red Bull’s Verstappen, taking a 20-second winning margin to the chequered flag on Sunday, with the Red Bull team principal explaining he was able to make the difference in his first stint in particular.

“I think Lando was a step ahead, particularly on the medium tyre,” Horner said.

“On the hard tyre, it didn’t show as much, but on the medium tyre he was very, very quick today.

“But [in] the rest of the field, I didn’t see a car that was quicker than Max. I thought [Oscar] Piastri had good duration to his stint on that medium tyre, but then on the hard tyre, there was an 18-second gap, and it seemed to be static for a long period of time. I can’t remember what it finished as, but it was around that mark.”

Norris managed to close the gap to Verstappen in the Drivers’ standings to 52 points, with six races and three Sprints to go, and Horner added that Red Bull will be doing all they can in the final quarter of the season.

“There’s a lot of racing still to happen,” he said, “and we’re certainly going to be fighting hard through the next triple-header, and then the final triple-header after that.”

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