Lando Norris called a hypocrite by Argentinian politician after Franco Colapinto F1 ban comments
An Argentinian politician has weighed in on Lando Norris' call for Franco Colapinto to be banned from F1.
Lando Norris has been called out for hypocrisy by an Argentinian politician over his comments about Franco Colapinto deserving a Formula 1 ban.
Reigning F1 world champion Norris called for Colapinto be banned for causing a multi-car accident at a safety car restart at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix that wiped out Alpine team-mate Pierre Gasly and McLaren’s Norris.
Colapinto took full responsibility and apologised for being “out of control” and making “a big mistake”, but a fuming Norris felt the Argentinian should be severely punished.
"The FIA should be more strict and start handing out bans for this kind of stuff,” Norris said.
"It's careless from people. It costs a lot of money. All my parts are in the bin now, so people should just get banned for this kind of driving. [They] don't deserve to be in Formula 1.
“If you cause a crash on a restart like this, yeah, you should have at least a one-race ban.”
On Sunday, Argentina’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pablo Quirno, took to X (formerly Twitter) to respond to Norris’s remarks about Colapinto.
Quirno accused Norris of being a hypocrite and pointed out that Norris was not penalised when he crashed into McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri at last year’s Canadian Grand Prix.
“Sure, Lando Norris called for a penalty for the driver who crashed into Oscar Piastri in Montreal 2025,” he wrote on social media. “Ah, no… right.”
Norris appears to have rattled an entire country, with the Briton’s social media posts being flooded with comments from Argentinian fans, despite his last post being on 17 September.
It comes after Alpine executive Flavio Briatore threatened Colapinto’s fans with a media blackout in response to social media abuse directed towards his team-mate Gasly.
Briatore apologised to Norris and McLaren for Colapinto’s error in Baku and revealed the team is considering what action to take next.
"I want to take time to reflect on it and consider what course of action should be taken, so we can learn from it and avoid such a situation in future,” Briatore said in Alpine’s post-race press release.
"I know that Franco has taken full responsibility for it, as he should; in fact he braked far too late considering the context of the race and the safety car restart. It was a very poor move for a driver of his experience."
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