Martin Brundle delivers ruthless Lando Norris message to stop Max Verstappen

Martin Brundle has told Lando Norris to stop “laying out the welcome mat” for Max Verstappen after the US Grand Prix.

Although there were many opinions about their final battle, Brundle went back to the start of the race where pole sitter Norris let Verstappen in on the inside.

Martin Brundle tells Lando Norris to be more ruthless after US GP clash

The nature of the first corner at the Circuit of The Americas means that whoever is in the lead tends to slam the door on their opponent.

However, Norris did not take advantage of that option and after coming into the corner first, he left enough space for Verstappen to squeeze into it.

The result was that Verstappen and Norris got confused, while Charles Leclerc was able to take the lead and ultimately win the race.

After Norris lost more ground in the title race, Brundle told him he had to be more ruthless if he wanted to beat Verstappen.

“Lando needs to stop welcoming on the inside because Max Verstappen doesn’t need a second invitation,” Brundle told Sky F1. “He doesn’t need an initial invitation to enter when you leave the width of a car.

“He’s a street fighter. He races hard. He plays by the rules, he plays them hard and he gets them well and sometimes he pushes the limit.

In the later incident in which Norris was given a five-second time penalty, Brundle believes that Verstappen was the overtake man in that situation and should have left more space.

“The circuit is the fundamental problem. It’s too easy to go wide,” the veteran expert said.

“In my opinion, Norris was substantially over Verstappen, so it was Verstappen who became the overtaking man in that corner and should have given Norris more space on the outside.

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“It’s a slam dunk. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Lando should have given that place back, and McLaren should have asked him to give that place back immediately.

“The regulations simply don’t work. There are two reference points on which they are fundamentally based on these guidelines.

“One is the position in relation to someone else’s mirror. You can barely see your own mirror in it, let alone anyone else’s.

“But there is also a hard reference point of an imaginary summit. Where is the highlight now? Turn 1 in Austin is a very good example. The summit is actually about three-quarters of the way around the corner.

“So you can’t set guidelines based on an imaginary point, especially because the cars aren’t necessarily on the inside.”

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