‘People will probably hate me’ – Norris has brutal reaction to Ricciardo being axed by McLaren saying he has no sympathy
LANDO NORRIS has "no sympathy" for Daniel Ricciardo after his teammate was axed by McLaren.
The Brit driver gave his brutal response to the news ahead of this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, where Ricciardo will begin his final nine races with the British racing team.
The Australian has struggled for pace since joining the iconic team and has regularly been beaten on track by Norris both in qualifying and in the race.
He and the team confirmed that they were bringing his contract to an early end this week, with McLaren having to pay out a reported £14.15m to the 33-year-old.
Fellow Aussie Oscar Piastri is tipped to replace him after his dramatic and public row with Alpine earlier this month.
Lando Norris did not mince his words when asked for his reaction, despite the fact that he appears to have a good working relationship with Ricciardo since they became teammates at the beginning of last season.
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Asked if he had any sympathy for Ricciardo, Norris said: "I hate to say it, but I would say no.
"People will probably hate me for saying it.
"And it's difficult because I never know if I might encounter that in the future with this car or a different team, or whatever, so I never want to contradict myself going into the future.
"I've just got to focus on my driving and my job. It's not my job to focus on someone else and I'm not a driver coach. I'm not here to help and do those kinds of things."
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McLaren CEO Zak Brown revealed the situation has taught the team to have more performance related clauses in contracts from now on.
He said: "I think my one learning there would just be contractual, I don't think there's anything we could have done differently for him as a driver.
"I'm sitting here right now thinking I don't think we could have done something differently to make him more competitive. We tried all that.
"We've had to end the relationship early. We've had to write a big cheque, which is fine because that's the deal that we cut.
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"I think what I'll do next time is maybe have some more performance protections for us and not just assume that a great driver's going to always be great. I think that's the one learning as more a contractual one, but it's a big one."
Despite Ricciardo's struggles, he was responsible McLaren's best recent race when he won last season's Italian Grand Prix.