“It’s not up to me” - Norris reacts to teammate Piastri’s shunt in Dutch GP FP2

Piastri lost control of his McLaren going through the Hugenholtzbocht banked corner at Zandvoort.

In comical fashion, fellow Australian Daniel Ricciardo did the same just moments after, triggering a red flag stoppage. 

Piastri had shown impressive pace up until that point, gapping Norris by a couple of tenths on the harder rubber.

In Piastri’s absence, Norris enjoyed a strong session, ultimately topping the timesheets in FP2 ahead of reigning world champion Max Verstappen.

When asked about whether Piastri can ‘shake off’ the shunt in second practice, Norris said: “He can do it himself. It’s not up to me, I’m not the one driving his car. 

“He’ll be alright, he’s done a good job so far. It happens, that’s it, he’s cool.”

Reflecting on the day from his own perspective, Norris was naturally encouraged by the pace McLaren showed at Zandvoort.

“A good day for us,” he said. “It’s nice to be back, good to be back in the car. [I was] feeling a little bit rusty, I will say – a few laps and you’re back in it. 

“But a good day for us. We sacrificed quite a bit of FP1 to do a lot of aero running so we were a little bit behind on kind of learning and trying and testing some things, but valuable stuff for the future.

“I think to end up how we did today was encouraging and makes us look forward to tomorrow.”

Norris is expecting a “close” qualifying session with Williams, Alpine and AlphaTauri showing flashes of great pace.

“It’s close. I think it’s going to be very close come tomorrow. It’s a short track, one minute 12, one minute 11, probably one minute 10s or something tomorrow. It’s going to be very tight, between many people.

“You have the Williams there, Alpine are there, AlphaTauris are there, so it’s just going to be a scrap, a lot of people fighting for the top spot. It’s going to make it easy to do both things, not easy to get to the top but easy to get knocked out early on, and reward you well. If you do a good job you can all the way to a good [spot] in Q3. It’s going to be tough. 

“We can stay there, just no mistakes.”