Norris conflicted by decision to award F1 points in Belgian GP

Norris disagrees with the principle of points being handed out with no proper racing laps completed, while acknowledging that the six earned by his McLaren teammate Daniel Ricciardo for fourth place were useful in the ongoing battle with Ferrari.

Norris had a shot pole at Spa having been fastest in Q1 and Q2 on Saturday, before crashing in Q3.

That left him in 10th place, before a gearbox change penalty dropped him down to 15th. He gained one place in the final classification after Sergio Perez crashed on the way to the grid.

Asked by Motorsport.com about realising in retrospect how expensive the accident had been, Norris acknowledged his frustration.

"Yeah, of course," he said. "But I guess the hindsight of it is, it's only half points as well. And now a lot of the people I'm racing against as a driver didn't score any points, or Charles [Leclerc] got one or something.

"And even for us as a team, we still have outscored Ferrari, which is important. But we're here to race, we want to race. And yeah, I guess I'm disappointed I didn't get to try make up for yesterday's problem."

Norris said that points should only have been given out if there had been actual racing laps.

"I don't think any points should be awarded for today. How little we did today, I think [it's OK if it was] X amount of actual racing laps, like we go out and we race for X amount of the race, but to drive round behind the safety car and for people to get points?

"Maybe I'll be saying the opposite if I was first, on a good amount of points. Even though it's benefited us today, Daniel got a good amount of points comparing to Ferrari, I don't think it was a race deserving of points, because it wasn't a race at the end of the day."

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Asked if he thought the FIA had started the race purely to reach the stage of points being awarded, he said it was worth allowing the drivers to sample the conditions.

"Maybe they tried to get the points, [but] whatever their decision on trying to do that makes sense. I just don't believe points should be awarded and so on. I don't think they put us at risk, I think it was worth trying.

"When you do two laps, it's okay. I think it was the right decision, but is also a good decision not to go ahead."

He admitted that the accident and the lost opportunities had weighed on his mind.

"It plays over in my head a bit, because I was so annoyed.

"Not just that I'd crashed, but just that I'd given up on the opportunity to maybe score a pole position, and I feel quite convinced and confident that I could have at least been in the top two, and possibly ahead of Max [Verstappen].

"So that would have been a lovely result today, although I don't feel like a result today is really a result deserved of points. Still, being in that position would have been nice."