AUSTIN – Lando Norris said F1 stewards have to be more consistent with penalties after he lost a podium to championship rival Max Verstappen at the U.S. Grand Prix.

Norris and Verstappen both ran off the circuit while they battled for third position late in the race.

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Norris emerged ahead and finished the race infront of Verstappen on track, but he was relegated to fourth by a five-second time penalty.

When asked if he understood the decision, Norris said: “I don’t.”

The Briton went on to reference his clash with Verstappen at the Austrian Grand Prix, where they made contact while fighting for the win and dropped down the order.

“He went off the track by defending, has overdefended and made a mistake, and therefore has gained from that. At the same time, because of that, I’ve had to go off the track. It’s impossible for people to know if I could have made it on the track or I couldn’t.

“You can’t steward that kind of thing. But those are the rules. They seem to change, because it seems like it’s quite inconsistent from say what happened in Austria, where Max didn’t get a penalty and went off the track, gained an advantage. There’s again inconsistency, but it’s tough.”

Norris had started from pole position but had been pushed wide by Verstappen at the start, which the stewards did not investigate.

“I think both times, Max went off the track, he had a lot of commitment to keep me behind. The thing is with Max, you’ve got to commit. People don’t understand that kind of thing.

“With Max, you can’t just go half-hearted. Turn 1 is a bit harder to say, whether it’s I didn’t commit enough, but the fact that he committed so much speed in that he again went off the track, I mean I can’t just dive up the inside of someone, run off, and then keep the position in normal running.

“But for some reason, it’s completely OK in Lap 1 on Turn 1. It’s a tough one. Yeah. I don’t know. It hurts today.”

By giving up a position to Verstappen, Norris slipped further behind in the title race — he is now 57 points adrift with five races and two sprints to go.

“It’s a momentum killer,” Norris said. “The one guy I need to beat is Max, and that’s the guy I didn’t beat today. So it was an unsuccessful weekend all in all. But we gave it a good shot. I tried. It wasn’t good enough, and we have work to do, and I have work to do on myself.”