David Beckham and Gordon Ramsay ruin Lando Norris’ day with brutal jinx
Images of Gordon Ramsay and David Beckham have got tongues wagging with the pair under fire for their behaviour at the Qatar Grand Prix.
Gordon Ramsay has uttered one of the great sporting jinxes as Lando Norris’ Qatar Grand Prix fell apart spectacularly on Monday morning.
It was an absolute trainwreck inside the McLaren garage as Norris and Aussie Oscar Piastri suffered from a botched pit stop strategy that handed victory to Max Verstappen.
Football superstar David Beckham was a VIP inside the McLaren garage as the team imploded following a decision not to call its drivers into the pits when every other team did during a safety car on Lap 7.
It proved to be one of the biggest blunders of the championship fight this year. Verstappen is now just 12 points behind Englishman Norris, who still leads the championship heading into next weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with a 16-point buffer on Piastri.
Verstappen has now overtaken Piastri in the standings but the Australian’s title hopes still have a pulse — they would have been well and truly alive had McLaren not cost him the win and seven more points in Qatar.
It’s not how the race on the Lusail circuit was supposed to go — at least in the eyes of 70 million Brits.
British sporting royalty and celebrity star power was out in force before the race with football legends Steven Gerrard and Rio Ferdinand also spotted walking the grid together.
The only problem as they all said Norris was going to win.
“How nice would it be in 90 minutes to crown a British champion,” celebrity chef Ramsay told Sky Sports during Martin Brundle’s traditional pre-race grid walk.
“Fingers crossed for Lando. It’s in the bag. Without a doubt. 100 per cent tonight. And then enjoy the next weekend without all the pressure.”
Manchester United icon Ferdinand also said: “I’d love him to win now with the position that he’s in.”
Gerrard also said he hoped Norris could wrap up the championship “tonight”.
Beckham’s presence in the McLaren garage is another case to add to the conspiracy theory of celebrities ruining the races of the team they link up with.
Ramsay, particularly, has come under fire for his comments.
“This aged well,” one person commented on X.
One person posted: “Clowns be clowning. This will be the meme of 2025”.
Another posted: “Jinx. Bro just make me a sandwich and keep it moving”.
One pereson summed it up, writing: “You f***ing donkeys”.
It is far more likely McLaren were the architects of their own demise.
Norris, who finished fourth after fighting past Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli on the final lap, was never going to recover after he was forced into the pits late in the race.
He was far from happy and was seen in a number of icy exchanges with reporters following the race.
“It’s tough,” he said.
“We just have to have faith in the team in making the right decision.
“It’s always a gamble. I feel like we’re the ones who took the gamble in a way. Now it’s the wrong decision and we shouldn’t have done it.
“Oscar lost the win and I lost P2. We didn’t do a good job today, but we’ve done plenty of good jobs in other races and we won the constructors’ seven or six races ago because of that.
“Not our finest day, but that’s life.”
It was questions about the team’s so-called “Papaya Rules” to let the teammates race freely that really irked the 26-year-old.
“It’s nothing to do with that,” he said.
“Everyone keeps thinking that, but it’s got nothing to do with that. We’re free to race.
“Red Bull were just as quick today as they were yesterday. They did a better job as a team and made the right call. That’s it.
“We’ll review things, see what we could have done better. We already know - we didn’t make the right decision.
“You can’t get them all right, you know.
“They do their job. I do my job. If we do that we’ll be fine.”
Norris put up a red flag and could see that the team was making the wrong call as soon as he was told to stay out on track on Lap 7.
McLaren supremo Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella have both apologised in public to Norris and Piastri.
The big question heading into Sunday night’s season-ending race in Abu Dhabi surrounds McLaren’s potential decision to make Norris No. 1 driver status in order to make sure Verstappen doesn’t steal the crown.
A decision to prioritise Norris would be a bombshell with Piastri relegated to No. 2 driver status despite being a mathematical chance to win the world title.
Originally published as David Beckham and Gordon Ramsay ruin Lando Norris’ day with brutal jinx
‘THIS IS AWKWARD’: Frosty post-race scenes after F1 title decided
