No regrets” over China, Canada F1 races but could have been “smarter

Lando Norris has insisted he has no regrets when reflecting on the opening 14 races of his 2025 Formula 1 title campaign, though has picked out moments in China and Canada where he could have been “a little bit smarter”.

Of the two, his Canada clash with team-mate Oscar Piastri is the more obvious one; Norris had been frustrated as an attempt to pass on the exit of Montreal’s hairpin had come to nothing – and he made the wrong decision when attempting to thread his McLaren down the inside of a rapidly closing gap on the start-finish straight.

Norris also pointed to sprint qualifying in China, where he locked up at the final hairpin on his last lap of the session and aborted his lap – one he believes would have yielded pole for the Saturday race.

Although Norris was keen to point out that he did not regret those moments, stating that they offered learning opportunities, in retrospect, he felt that he needed to tell himself not to “try and be a hero” in the moment.

“Could I have at times, made maybe better decisions? I think so,” Norris said in the prelude to the Dutch Grand Prix weekend.

“The main one was China sprint qualifying; I think my lap was good enough for pole until the final hairpin where I locked up. If I had that thought probably just before braking ‘it’s a long season, don’t try and be a hero’, then I would have finished it. I lost eight points there.

“And if I go back to Canada, if I could rerun that and just be a little bit smarter and not take so much risk, could I have not lost quite a few points there? Yes.

“I wouldn’t say I regret those moments. I mean, do I wish it changed and do I wish it was better? Do I wish I could maybe do it again? Yeah, but at the same time I don’t regret making those decisions at the time because I think that’s me, that’s life, and that’s the way it goes.

“Sometimes it goes your way and you get lucky, sometimes it goes the other way and you don’t make the best decisions, but those are also the times you quite often learn the most and help yourself more for the future.

“I think for me in my life, I would say I live it more by not regretting what I’ve done, more trying to learn and improve from that point onwards.”

Norris elaborated on the management risks involved, particularly when battling with a team-mate for a Formula 1 title.

He explained that both he and Piastri are well aware of the balance between risk and reward – adding that perhaps both drivers have undersold themselves on track when choosing not to take risk.

“I think that’s something that probably for a while we’ve been doing already,” Norris explained.

“As much as we want to win races and get into second or third at times, and probably at some little points could have taken more risks, I think for a little while now we’ve probably understood that risk element more.

“I think we know when we need to take it, like qualifying, and we also know during a race, maybe for one more point, you might not risk anything.

“But for the win you would risk more and depending on who you’re racing also is quite an important factor of it all. That’s part of being a racing driver – you’ve got to understand who you can take risks with, who you can’t, when to take this risk and when and when not to.

“I think you have to understand that a little bit more when you start fighting for a championship. Like from the question at the beginning: if I could go back and change what I did in China, not take that risk, I would probably do it.

“I probably wasn’t quite on top of everything and as thoughtful as I probably needed to be so early on in the championship season. But I’ve learned from that, and I make better decisions now.”