Lando Norris warns protesters not to risk lives at British Grand Prix

WOKING – McLaren Formula One driver Lando Norris urged environmental activists on Monday not to put lives in danger with “stupid and selfish” protest during this weekend’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Six Just Stop Oil campaigners ran onto the track after an opening-lap crash at the 2022 race and the same group have disrupted cricket, horse racing, rugby and snooker events in recent months.

Protesters scattered orange powder on the outfield at Lord’s during the second Ashes cricket Test last week.

“There is a concern. It is a stupid thing to do to put your life in danger with cars driving around,” Norris said at McLaren’s Woking factory at the unveiling of a new one-off Google Chrome car livery for Silverstone.

“It is a very selfish thing to do at the same time because of the consequences it has on the person who drives the car if something happens.

“Everyone has a right (to protest) and I guess there are good ways of doing it and worse ways,” added the 23-year-old Briton.

“I hope people are smart enough not to do it. There are much safer ways to get just as much attention and do what they want to do.”

More than 140,000 spectators are expected on Sunday at Silverstone.

Those demonstrators involved in the 2022 protest at Silverstone were convicted in February of causing a public nuisance.

Five of them ran onto the high-speed Wellington Straight after Alfa Romeo’s Chinese driver, Zhou Guanyu, crashed and halted the race.

Cars were still driving back to the pit lane as marshals and police dragged the protesters away.

“Going to a race track with cars coming at 200mph (322kmh) is not the way to go about it,” said Norris’ Australian teammate Oscar Piastri.

“They’ve had the consequences of their actions from last year. Of course I hope it doesn’t happen again. I’m sure Silverstone will have measures in place to stop it.

“It’s obviously a bit easier and less dangerous to jump onto a cricket field than a racetrack.”

Meanwhile, McLaren boss Zak Brown said F1 will make sure the track limits chaos of Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix never happens again.

The results of the race were revised five hours after the finish, following a flurry of penalties dealt to nearly half the field of 20 drivers for going entirely beyond the white lines at the edge of the asphalt.

Norris was a major beneficiary, moving up from fifth to fourth, but Brown said the situation at Spielberg’s Red Bull Ring should never have happened.

“We can’t have it again. We can’t have a race and five hours later you have that degree of change and penalties,” he said.

“It definitely wasn’t ideal what happened, that’s stating the obvious, (but) it has no long-term impact because I don’t think it will ever happen again,” added the 51-year-old American, about a situation some said made the sport look amateurish.

Race control had to review more than 1,200 instances in the 71-lap race where a car was reported to have potentially left the track.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before, so I don’t think this is something that is an ongoing issue at other race circuits,” said Brown.

“I think it was specific to that one, so I think we need to look at, how do you fix that?

“What we need to do is make sure it never happens again and that we do a proper debrief and understand how we could have prevented it in the first place or handled it differently.” REUTERS