That was a little tricky was he having a problem or he was just going slow

When Lando Norris was delayed by Sergio Perez at the Japanese Grand Prix, he admitted to “swearing quite a bit.”

The Virtual Safety Car was activated on Lap 12 after Perez and Kevin Magnussen collided, sending the latter into a spin and leaving the former in need of a new front wing.

Perez was already racing down the order after colliding with Lewis Hamilton on the run to the first corner, necessitating an opening lap stop for a new nose.

Norris encountered the ambling Red Bull at the Spoon curve under the resultant Virtual Safety Car, but rules initially forbade him from passing.

“That was a little tricky,” team manager Andrea Stella said.

“It was tricky because Lando wasn’t sure if Sergio was having a problem, in which case you can overtake, or if he was just going slow on the Virtual Safety Car, in which case he would have said, ‘I don’t want to overtake and then have a penalty.'”

“So we start to ask, we asked Race Control, we received the okay, but actually we received the okay once we had lost some time already, which was a bit of a shame.”

Norris’ lap time was 2:03.597s, while race leader Max Verstappen’s time was 1:59.754s – a four-second difference.

“He must have had a problem,” Norris speculated after the race.

“But the thing is, you can’t overtake with VSC unless the guy obviously has a problem.”

“I didn’t know if he had a problem or if he was just backing me up; I didn’t know, and I couldn’t risk overtaking him.”

“He was going so slowly, and then when we got the flashing dash for VSC ending, he was like in first gear.”

“I was shouting in my helmet, swearing quite a bit,” Norris recalled.

“I was just so perplexed. “I didn’t know what to do.”

The delay had no effect on Norris’ race, as he finished second at the time, 19 seconds behind Verstappen.

“It doesn’t affect the final result but it is a bit inconvenient,” Stella said.

“It’s difficult. It’s difficult because, as a driver, you can only assess based on the reference time, and Lando could see that he was losing a significant amount of time in comparison to the reference time.

“However, it’s always a little debatable whether, for example, if the car hadn’t had a problem, you would have overtaken – maybe the driver who is holding could take an unsportsmanlike penalty, but you could also be summoned because you overtook.”

“We played very cautiously like, let’s wait, let’s ask, but this takes time and we lost some time.”

Perez eventually retired from the race, but returned briefly to clear an in-race penalty so it did not carry over to the Qatar Grand Prix as a grid drop.