F1 warned Lando Norris booing could “lead to something nasty”

Former F1 team manager Peter Windsor has warned that the continued booing of Lando Norris could “lead to something nasty”, calling on Liberty Media to take action.

Norris has won back-to-back F1 races to take the lead of the drivers’ championship.

The British driver won the Mexico City Grand Prix from pole position, finishing over 30 seconds clear of the field.

However, Norris was greeted with a chorus of boos when standing on the podium at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

A Mexican journalist explained to Norris in the post-race FIA press conference that the booing was due to McLaren allegedly favouring him at the Italian Grand Prix.

Explaining the boos for Norris, the journalist said: “From the race that you stopped, they messed up your pit stop, and then you were given the place back that got the three points - the extra points. So basically, people feel that you’re being given the championship.”

This led Norris to reply: “Sure. If they want to think that, then they certainly have the right to - they can think whatever they want. Yeah. I guess from us as a team, of course, we try and do things fairly.

“That was the comments we made back then. The same with, you know, two years ago in Budapest when I could have won the race and had to let Oscar back through and let him win a race he deserved to win. It was no different to that really. It was an incorrect decision that we made as a team to box him first — and, or me first here.

“And, yeah, to be honest, if you want to have the three points, they can. But they have the right to think whatever they want. But, yeah, like Oscar deserved the win last year in Budapest, I deserve to be ahead at Monza. Simple as that.”

Windsor calls for action

The boos for Norris continued at the Sao Paulo GP after his seventh win of the season.

Norris is now on course to become McLaren’s first world champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.

While booing isn’t a new thing in F1 - ask Sebastian Vettel or Max Verstappen - Windsor has called on the sport’s ownership, Liberty Media, to take action before it goes too far.

“The booing I think is absolutely terrible,” Windsor said. “It will lead eventually to something nasty happening. The more the crowd, the fans, the TV audience are incited to that, the worse it’s going to get, and we need to jump on it right now.

“Somebody from Liberty needs to say ‘this has got to stop and this is how it’s going to work’. We need to get all the top drivers saying in some sort of video ‘no more booing, this is not good’.

“We need to have the so-called rivals with their arms around each other saying ‘we’re all friends here’. It’s absolutely terrible, and for people not to respect Lando’s ability… they might as well watch another sport because they’ve obviously not been watching F1 with any sort of detail.”