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Norris, dons his favourite hair-shirt

 Regarding :-

How McLaren hopes Lando Norris’ Canada F1 clash will “make him a stronger”

Norris has a self-destructive streak.  There was never likely to be a gap for him to get past and certainly a driver like Piastri was unlikely to be asleep enough to let Norris have a run through that space - after all moving across the track is the natural racing line, moving a bit further to block any prospective move is the natural act at that point on the track.


I don't think Norris was desperate I think he was simply playing with fire knowing he was going to be burned.  We've seen it in qualifying in which instead of ensuring he gets a clean (if perhaps slower) lap in, Norris pushes the car further surely knowing it's likely to snap.


Norris knew that dropping a further two points to Piastri was hardly the end of the world, easily recovered by a pole to flag victory in Austria, but now he's dropped more than that.  


Why Norris does this?  Does he believe that his own experience in practice, and the race craft of his competitors is simply going to disappear in these moments and the car will stick, the gap will magically appear?


For me, he's "happy" to risk crashing out because then he can more easily deal with Piastri extending his lead.  Being further away, there will be less pressure on Norris and he gets to do the big "mea culpa" and don his hair race-suit.  Get all goth for a bit. No one can criticise him  for being outpaced by Piastri because he made a mistake and crashed out.  The criticism is different, even if heavier in topic, but gentler in substance.  It's not "you aren't fast enough", it's "you made a mistake".

The problem is you can only have the "nothing to lose" pressure of the underdog for so long.  Last season McLaren came good when Piastri was all but out of the title hunt.  This season McLaren is good and Piastri does not appear to be likely to make the mistakes that even up the battle scars.

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