LANDO NORRIS' TURN 14 MISTAKE - SINGAPORE GP

 Lando Norris dominated the Singapore Grand Prix, even rounding the Gran Chelem, snatched away from now ex-formula 1 driver, Daniel Ricciardo. It seems to be a perfect weekend but more than one occasion he made mistakes that could have cost him the victory. Let’s see in detail one in particular:

TURN 14 MISTAKE:

Lando Norris on lap 29 makes the first mistake (the most serious one) that could have cost him the victory or even the whole race, in fact the driver of the McLaren two laps before making the pit stop tries to make a lap faster than the previous one.

Using the telemetry provided by f1-tempo.com we can see how in lap 29 Lando Norris tries to optimize his lap, the first point where we can notice it is in turn 7, where he delays the step up of the foot from the accelerator, but brakes in a similar way to the previous one, obtaining an advantage of about 0.25s compared to the 28th lap.

This seems to have made the British driver confused, in fact we can see simply from the delta plot, as in the entry phase gains time, until we get to turn 14.

This is where Lando makes his first mistake: unlike the previous lap, the McLaren driver raises his foot later and even more directly, braking also happens after lap 28. This allows Norris to tackle the entry of turn 14 with greater speed and to increase even more the gap on Verstappen (already about 20s), but not always well.

In this case, during braking the driver of car 4 locks the right front tyre, limiting the rotation, goes along and damages the front wing. Before entering the pits, he informs the team via radio that his wing is probably damaged.

Luckily he manages to increase the load at the last flap, being able to continue the race and even increase the gap on Verstappen. Was this an unfortunate episode for the British driver or a really stupid move? I would say more the second (I am not a Norris hater) because:

The first reason is the simplest, the team did not ask him to go faster and you already have a very important gap. Initially the advantage to be created on the driver of the Red Bull was only 6s (to protect themselves from an eventual undercut), therefore he was in a much better situation than expected.

The second reason is: the team not only did not ask him to go faster, he literally told him to be careful not to delay braking in turn 14: "And Lando, just be careful braking that late turn 14".

This is my analysis on Norris's turn 14 mistake, let me know if you agree with me or if you have something else to say.