Lando Norris was not fooling anyone. Asked whether his seventh-place finish in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix was an “opportunity missed” in terms of the title race, the McLaren driver frowned.

“I don’t know why everyone says that,” he replied. “I did the best I could yesterday [in qualifying] and today [in the race]. The opportunities are there every weekend. Every race I didn’t win was an ‘opportunity missed’. Of course, today I wanted more, but today I couldn’t have done any more.”

You could understand Norris’s frustration, of course. But to claim this was no more of an opportunity missed than any other race in which he does not gain maximum points was giving it more topspin than a Carlos Alcaraz forehand.

The fact is Oscar Piastri – Norris’s team-mate and championship rival – does not crash every weekend. In fact, the Australian has spent an entire season not crashing. For some reason, which we are yet to understand, the Australian was more Mr Bean than Jack Brabham in Baku.

After clipping the wall during a “messy” practice session on Friday and crashing heavily in qualifying on Saturday, Piastri fared even worse in the grand prix itself.

First, he false-started, which would have........

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