Belgian Grand Prix: Lando Norris feels no sympathy for McLaren team-mate Daniel Ricciardo

Lando Norris says he feels no sympathy for team-mate Daniel Ricciardo following the Australian’s split with McLaren.

Norris said: “I don’t feel like you have to have sympathy for any driver because they’ve not been able to do as good a job.”

The 22-year-old Briton added that he “hated to say it”.

“People will probably hate me for saying it,” Norris admitted.

“I’ve just got to focus on my driving and my job,” said Norris. “It’s not my job to focus on someone else. I’m not a driver coach. I’m not here to help and do those kind of things. I’m here to perform at my absolute best. And that’s about it.

“So it’s difficult when people start to have an expectation that it’s my job to also start doing these other things and helping and describing this and doing that. When that’s not really the case.

“And it’s also the case that if I don’t perform well for a few years that it can also be the end of my career and the end of me driving in Formula 1.”

Ricciardo has been dropped because he has failed to match up to Norris on a consistent basis and after strenuous efforts McLaren felt they had hit a brick wall in trying to help him make further progress.

He is expected to be replaced by Australian Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri, with McLaren saying they will confirm their 2023 driver line-up “in due course”.

Norris emphasised that he, too, had had difficulties adapting to this year’s McLaren, which he described as “disconnected” and unpredictable.

“Every driver has to adapt to scenarios they are in and I feel like I’ve had to,” Norris said.

“It’s not a car that I’ve just been able to jump in and feel like I just flow with and can perform exactly how I want.

“In the beginning of the year, Daniel was performing better than I was in the pre-season and tests and stuff, and it looked like he could go out naturally and drive the car the way he wanted to and I had to start to learn a new way of driving compared to how I’ve been used to driving the car for the last few years.”

He added: “The only thing that people get extremely wrong is, any opinion, thinking the car’s designed around me or suiting me more than it is him.

“If I could choose an exact driving style for me to have and for a car to suit, this car doesn’t give me anything of what I want to do. And therefore the job as a driver is to adapt to that and just do the best you can with the car, which is what I’m doing and maybe easier for me to do than it is for Daniel.”

Ricciardo said he had no hard feelings towards McLaren, or towards Piastri and his manager, the former F1 driver Mark Webber, who is also Australian.

He described McLaren’s decision as “business”, adding: “It wasn’t dropped on me. We had been in dialogue for the last few months and it wasn’t always: ‘Hey, if you don’t (finish in the) top five this race you’re done.’

“It was more: ‘What can we do to try to keep making this work. But I understood it was a point of concern because the results I was getting were not up to a level of what we thought they should have been.

“We tried to rectify the issues but we came to a bit of a dead end where we felt we had exhausted what was within reach at that time and that’s what led to the decision.”

Alonso reveals Aston reasons

McLaren’s swoop for Piastri came in the context of Fernando Alonso deciding to leave Alpine and move to Aston Martin, as a replacement for Sebastian Vettel, who is retiring at the end of the season.

Alonso said his “intention” had been to stay with Alpine but that he had a “strange feeling” through his negotiations with the team.

Alpine wanted to sign Alonso for one year and commit to more only if his performance level stayed high; Alonso wanted a multi-year deal, which he got from Aston Martin.

“I was happy but for one reason or another we were not moving forwards since a couple of months and it seems it was a logical move to me because Aston were very willing to have me and trusted in my abilities on the track and off track as well to develop the project,” Alonso said.

“In my case, also it felt that after all the negotiations and the months, having the seat available for a younger driver and talented driver like Oscar it was the right thing to do, and a win-win situation for everyone.”

Alpine had intended to promote Piastri if they could not come to a deal with Alonso, thinking they had a contractual option on him, a decision chief executive officer Laurent Rossi had previously described as a “rich man’s problem”.

But it seems Alpine bosses misjudged the situation, not expecting Alonso to move, and believing they had a valid contract with Piastri if he did.

But Piastri decided to sign for McLaren, leaving Alpine, it seems, losing both their intended drivers.

Alonso, who won two titles with the team in 2005-6 when they were called Renault, said: “It has been an incredible journey for me to come back into the sport with a team I consider my family. We won so many things together and that will be part of our history, not only there Renault group history but also the Fernando history what we achieve together.”