It was the SOS of the day, perhaps of the season. It could have been for Houston. ‘I might be on fire,’ declared Lando Norris, smelling trouble in his cockpit.
Smoke chugged out of his engine, he slowed and stopped seven laps from the end, and how scorched his world title dream is was precisely what he pondered as he sat shattered on the Armco.
No ball of orange flame lapped at him, but the mind-bending horror was just as vivid. His McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri was on his ice-cool path to winning the Dutch Grand Prix and extending his championship lead to 34 points.
Now we will find out of what metal Norris is made.
We will discover if he has the fortitude to file away this grievous blow in a distant cabinet of his mind.
If he rises from the ashes of his Mercedes engine to triumph, he will have answered every doubter who questioned his tenacity.
There are still nine rounds remaining all the way up to the denouement in Abu Dhabi 18 days before Christmas, so he has chances to overcome the cruelty of yesterday’s drizzle-spotted race in Zandvoort, where he was lying second until calamity struck.
After taking a moment to compose himself, he walked back to the paddock offering a faint wave to the fans. His race engineer Will Joseph had tried to console him, telling his crestfallen driver how quick he had been – yes, often setting fastest laps – but it was cold comfort.
Half an hour later, he was as chirpy as you could possibly expect as he did his media rounds. He vowed to dig in, saying: ‘It hurts but I’ll fight on.
‘It certainly hasn’t helped (the title picture). It’s put me under more pressure. But it’s almost a big enough gap that I can chill out go for it.
‘The only thing I can do is to try to win every race. That’s going to be difficult, but I’ll give it everything I can.
‘Today was unlucky. It’s not my fault. It’s just racing.’
The reality is that Piastri has the wind behind him, this his seventh win of the season to Norris’s five. This victory came on the banked track where Norris won last year from pole to Piastri’s third-placed start and fourth-placed finish.
In passing, you would not hear the quiet, flinty Australian broach the idea of retiring after one hoped-for title as his 25-year-old adversary Norris did this weekend.
The Briton, lighter of spirits than Piastri, only toyed with the idea, admittedly, but why even that? If you ask me, this is the sort of talk he should banish for his own good.
The die was cast against Norris on Saturday with Piastri’s pole. Norris was 0.012sec back, a tiny margin yet Everest big in what it implied for the two chief protagonists on a tight track.
Norris admitted he needed magic to make things work for him. He specifically targeted a good start. Instead, Max Verstappen, the home favourite, whizzed past him before being covered by Piastri on the outside of the opening corner.
But, refusing to lie down and keen to exert the extra zip his soft tyres conferred, Verstappen overtook Norris at the second corner. Not without a heart-in-mouth moment, though.
The Dutchman ran on to the grass and just held on. His advantage was never going to last and, as his Red Bull’s soft tyres lost their potency, Norris regained second spot around the outside of Turn One.
Piastri maintained total command and never faltered in beating Verstappen, that weekly conjurer of rabbits, into runners-up spot. Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar finished third. It was the impressive French rookie’s maiden podium aged just 20.
It was a bad afternoon by the North Sea for another Brit, with Lewis Hamilton crashing out to his first retirement of a podium-less year – another landmark as welcome as scurvy.
Hamilton came into the weekend saying how he wanted to have ‘fun’, hoping for a fresh start after a restorative summer break. It did not exactly turn out that way. He qualified seventh behind team-mate Charles Leclerc, and then came his mistake at Turn Three.
Known as Hugenholtzbocht, it is banked 18ft and requires precision handling. Hamilton had a snap and ended up in the wall with his front right tyre taking the brunt. Asked if he was OK, he answered meekly: ‘Yeah. I’m so sorry guys.’
The other main incident of the race transpired on lap 53, at the location where Hamilton had come to grief.
Leclerc, who had survived a bumping of wheels in a frisky pas-de-deux with Mercedes’ fourth-place finisher George Russell, was under attack from Kimi Antonelli in the other Silver Arrow. The talented but raw 19-year-old was running below Leclerc, who was gripping the top of the banking. Antonelli caught Leclerc. The Monegasque had nowhere to go but into a car-mangled retirement.
A word of congratulation for Ollie Bearman, Haas’s 20-year-old Essex boy who finished sixth, having started 19th before smartly capitalising on events inclining to his strategy.
The safety car came out for both Ferrari-wrecking accidents. McLaren double-stacked their men in the pits on each occasion. Piastri was perfection at the restarts.
He richly earned the victor’s Delft Blue trophy even before it was all over for his poor rival. All over for now, that is. It’s over to you, Lando.
