United States Grand Prix result finally confirmed after McLaren’s late Lando Norris appeal

Lando Norris was hit with a five-second time penalty in the latter stages of the United States Grand Prix, which McLaren attempted to overturn ahead of Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix

McLaren’s attempts to overturn Lando Norris’ penalty from the United States Grand Prix have failed.

Norris was hit with a five-seond time penalty in the late stages of last week’s race after being judged to have gained an advantage when overtaking Max Verstappen by going off the track. The British driver insisted Verstappen should also have received a punishment, having ran wide himself.

But the stewards only handed a penalty to Norris, dropping him back behind his world championship title rival in the final classification. On Thursday, McLaren launched a right of review process, claiming they had new evidence showing Norris should not be punished.

The stewards from Austin called a meeting on video call, with Red Bull sending a team representative. Had the review been successful, Norris would have been classified as finishing third and Verstappen fourth.

Unfortunately for Norris though, the bid to have the penalty reviewed has been dismissed. The stewards met an hour after the conclusion of FP1 at the Mexico Grand Prix weekend and deemed “there is no relevent new element”.

McLaren’s evidence was the decision document which they claimed “contained a statement that was incorrect and that evidenced an objective, measurable and provable error had been made by the stewards”.

The decision document from the U.S. Grand Prix read, “Car 4 was overtaking Car 1 on the outside but was not level with Car 1 at the apex”. McLaren insisted this was an error because it “had evidence that Car 4 had already overtaken and was ahead of Car 1 at the braking zone”.

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McLaren claimed this was technically significant, relevant, new and unavailable to the Woking-based team at the time. But the stewards focused on the element of relevance when reaching their decision.

They insisted that arguing there had been an error in the initial decision document was “unsustainable,” nor did it count as a new element. As a result they have dismissed McLaren’s review, though the team insist that is the wrong decision.

“We disagree with the interpretation that an FIA document, which makes a competitor aware of an objective, measurable and provable error in the decision made by the stewards, cannot be an admissible ‘element’ which meets all four criteria set by the ISC, as specified in Article 14.3,” McLaren said in a statement.

“We will continue to work closely with the FIA to further understand how teams can constructively challenge decisions that lead to an incorrect classification of the race.”

Norris meanwhile was also left frustrated as he sits 57 points behind Verstappen heading into the final five races of the season. Speaking ahead of the right of review meeting, he insisted he should not be punished.

“He did what I guess he thought was right, I did what I thought was right,” Norris said on Thursday. “I still disagree, and I think as a team, we still disagree. I think the majority of people who were watching disagreed with the penalty that I got.”