BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Lando Norris said his mind was "going pretty crazy" thinking about the championship when McLaren were pleading with him to slow down and let teammate Oscar Piastri win the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Norris had ended up ahead of Piastri thanks to the undercut late in the race when he pitted for new tyres two laps earlier. For a while it seemed like Norris was set to ignore the team's requests to let Piastri back in front, only for him to slow with two laps left and allow the Australian past for his first F1 win.
Norris said: "I was going to wait until the last lap, the last corner. But then they [McLaren] said if there was a safety car all of a sudden, and I couldn't let Oscar go through, then it would have made me look like a bit of an idiot. Then I was like, 'yeah, it's fair point'. And I let him go."
Referencing his bad start, Norris said: "I didn't deserve to win the race today. Simple as that.
"So the fact I was in that position was incorrect. I shouldn't have been in that position in the first place. I shouldn't have been given that hope of 'I'm here, I'm leading a race'."
Second place meant Norris closed Verstappen's lead down to 76 points -- but it could have been 70 had he stayed in front, something he admitted had created a conflict in his head late on.
"These things are always going to go through your mind," Norris said. "You've got to be selfish in this sport at times. You've got to think of yourself, that's priority number one -- think of yourself. I'm also a team player. My mind was going pretty crazy at the time.
"I know what we've done in the past between Oscar and myself, he's helped me plenty of times, and I think this is a different situation. This is not someone helping one another. I was put into a position, and we were undoing that position change.
"But I mean I'm also -- and I know a lot of people are going to say, the gap between me and Max is pretty big, 60, 70, 80 points or something -- but if Red Bull and Max make the mistakes like they did today, and continue to do that, and as a team we continue to improve and have weekends like we've had this weekend, we can turn it around.
"It's still optimistic. It's still a big goal to say we can close 70 points, as a driver I can close 70 points in half a season. When you're thinking of the seven or six points that I give away, it crosses your mind, for sure. So, it was not easy. But I also understood the situation I was in, and I was quite confident always by the last lap I would have done it."
Verstappen had a difficult weekend for Red Bull and finished fifth after a late collision with Lewis Hamilton.