Norris saw Perez's rolling start: 'Seemed more like a penalty than mine'

Something unusual happened to Lando Norris' car at the start of the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix. The Briton drove off too early, but he received no penalty for a false start. George Russell saw the false start happen and reported it to his engineer. Norris said, ahead of the race weekend in Australia, that anyone would snitch on their rival the moment they saw something like that happen.

False start Norris at Saudi Arabia GP

"I knew they would always snitch on me," Norris said. "They always turn their back on you when you get in the car. Everyone does. But I didn't think anyone needed to snitch. I think it was quite obvious. I've never done this ever in my life."

Norris continued: "Since I did karting, I've never done it. So I don't know what suddenly happened. Potentially, you're just ready to go. There are so many lights, and it's quite so dark. I don't know if I just reacted to a light elsewhere, either in the corner of my eye or people videoing or whatever it is. I've reacted to something, but obviously quickly enough managed to stop and then I've hurt myself in terms of the actual rundown to Turn 1."

So the Briton received no penalty for the incident. He himself is not surprised: "I don't know what I can say here. I don't know the true extent of how the rules work for it. At what point do you have to be stopped, how do the transponder trigger work and all of these things? I was a little bit surprised. But I didn't gain anything from it."

Perez false start

Norris was not the only one who seemed to make a false start in Saudi Arabia. Sergio Perez was rolling before the lights went out. The Mexican also received no penalty for the incident. He eventually finished in second place.

Perez's escape was also on Norris' mind: "This was more of a penalty than my one. But it wasn't a penalty, right? So again, I don't know what the ruling was for this and how they defined this."

Norris continued: "In my eyes, it depends. You can easily see my one as potentially should be a bigger penalty because I'm, what people might think, preempting a start, which is normally the opposite because I have terrible reactions, so it's far from that. This one is a genuine advantage of actual starting procedure. My one, I wasn't trying to preempt, I'm just trying to react and I've accidentally reacted, which turned into a mistake, whereas what happened with his car, I don't know if he was doing it on purpose or what, so I can't comment on that."