Lando Norris demands a race ban for Franco Colapinto following incident which turned the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on its head.

At a time relations between Argentina and Britain are already on a knife edge, the 2025 world champion hardly helped the situation by demanding a race ban for Colapinto.

Initially, the McLaren driver had said the Alpine driver shouldn't even be in the sport, but given time to calm down - and no doubt aware of the impending storm from Colapinto's army of keyboard warriors - merely called for a race ban.

"I was just slow," he admitted to Sky Sports in the moments after the race, having spent much of the afternoon running sixth. "I struggled a lot in this race," he continued. "You saw how quickly everyone came past me.

"Otherwise, I still made the mistake," he added, referring to the lock-up, just before Alex Albon's crash which brought about the initial Safety Car, which saw him passed by Pierre Gasly and Kimi Antonelli. "But at the end of the day, I just got taken out...

"Just some drivers that shouldn't be in Formula 1 to, be honest," he snaped.

Subsequently, speaking to the written media, the 2025 world champion said: "If you cause a crash on a restart like this, you should have at least a one-race ban.

"I just got taken out," he added. "And the FIA should be stricter by starting to hand out bans for this kind of stuff. It is just careless. It costs a lot of money, all my parts are in the bin now. It is not driving that deserves to be in Formula 1.

"In Formula 1 you would expect that drivers can anticipate that the grip will be low and tyre temperatures are low. You want to be against the best drivers and when stuff like this happens it is because, yeah, they shouldn't be there."

The Argentine was deemed wholly responsible by the stewards, who gave him a 10s time penalty, however, as Colapinto had retired from the race, and therefore unable to serve the penalty this was converted to a 5-place grid penalty for next weekend's race at Sepang.

Race-winner, George Russell thought Norris's reaction was a little extreme.

"I think that's too harsh, personally," said the Mercedes driver. "I think Safety Car restarts, cold tyres, a very small mistake can have big consequences.

"From what I saw today, that's what it looked like. It was a small error that had a big consequence.

"Personally, I think race bans should come from drivers intentionally doing something very dangerous and very reckless. So I think it was unfortunate."

"I think as long as, of course, the driver that caused it is aware of what he did, right, and apologised..." agreed Max Verstappen, "I mean, yeah, that happens.

"I mean, like, a small mistake or misjudgement, you lock up, it's on the inside, low grip, and, of course, then I guess a bit unfortunate that it involves so many cars," he continued.

"But, yeah, unfortunate, it happens, and it's not nice, I think. Not nice for anyone involved, right? But like George said, I think, yeah, a race ban probably is a bit much."

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