"One bad decision cost us a lot of places," admits Lando Norris after P7 race finish at Dutch GP

Zandvoort [Netherlands], August 28 (ANI): Lando Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri were left wondering what may have been following a "difficult afternoon" at Zandvoort and felt McLaren's choice to delay pitting until late as the rain began to fall in the early stages of the Dutch Grand Prix was the "wrong decision".
Overcoming heavy rain at the start and end of the race, Red Bull Racing star Max Verstappen secured a record-levelling ninth-successive Formula 1 victory of the season in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. 
Norris started second but dropped to third as Fernando Alonso passed him on lap two despite a strong start. Many drivers decided to swap to the intermediate tyres at this point as rain started to fall.
Norris stayed out longer, while he was still racing in second place behind George Russell, and as a result, he lost to many other drivers who had stopped for intermediates. He pitted and started out in position 12, eventually working his way up to sixth at the finish line.
Reflecting on that early call by McLaren, Norris told Formula 1, “Wrong decision. [We] just made the wrong decision at the beginning. I guess it happens, but at the same time, [we] should be doing a slightly better job than we did today."
“Some good things of course – I don’t want to say it is all negative. Some points on the board, it wasn’t a shocking race. A lot of it was good – the pit stop for the second bit of rain was good, so some good things. Just the first one was a bad decision and cost us a lot of places," he added.
Asked whether the strong pace he showed in getting back up the order was one of the positives, Norris replied, “A little bit, but nowhere near as much as I would have liked. I couldn’t overtake half the time just because we were so bad in the middle sector."
“I think we expected it that’s why I was nervous coming into the race today. What I thought was right – we were going to struggle in certain places. Some places we were good, and if we were in clean air, I think we would’ve been relatively all right.
“But I think the Mercedes was on another level compared to us today. Their tyre deg is always better, they have good front end on the car, and that’s what we probably lacked on a day like today," Norris said. 
Piastri began tenth, but unlike his teammate, he did not use the intermediate tyres at all, instead sticking with the softs throughout the wet early stages. This lost him time and sent him down the order, but he battled back to finish eighth.
Definitely a difficult afternoon that’s for sure. I think maybe a few decisions that we would make differently if we had them the second time," said Piastri. 
"Also, from myself a couple of mistakes that maybe didn’t destroy our race but certainly didn’t help it. I think obviously we wanted to finish a bit higher than where we have, and we will have a look at what we could have done a bit better," he added. (ANI)