Lando Norris joked that he hoped Valtteri Bottas' slow pit stop in the season-opening F1 Bahrain Grand Prix resulted in the Finn's re✃tirement from the race.

Norris was running comfortably fourth for most of the race in Bahrain ahead of Ch🍒arles Lecl💯erc, who was later overtaken by Red Bull’s Sergio Perez for fifth.

Bottas was stationary for 10.9s in his second and f🗹inal pit stop, dropp🍌ing him behind Norris on track.

Speaking after the race inജ Bahrain, Norris admitted he saw flashbacks to last year’s Sakhir Grand Prix where Mercedes had a tyre mix up at its fina✃l pit stop.

“Something happened with Bottas in his stop,” Norris said. “I was hoping that was him out of the race to be honest! I don’t wish that ✅upon anyone obviously bu💝t I thought for a minute something might be coming from it. Last year started to flashback a bit.”

Norris finished well clear of McL🌄aren’s midfield rivals in Bahrain and over 20 sec🧔onds ahead of new teammate Daniel Ricciardo.

“I’m very happy with P4,” Norris added. “I think we had good pace to be honest, the car was n🌳ice, I was maintaining a good gap, but I also had to get past Daniel, past Pierre, past Charl𓄧es, so it wasn’t easy.

“But I fought hard in the beginning, to try and get track posiꦚtion, and then I could maintain the tyresꦡ and keep them in good condition.”

Ricciardo 🃏could only 🤪manage seventh on his McLaren debut after struggling for race pace in the second part of the grand prix.

“It was a difficult race actually – not diffi𓄧cult, a little bit boring at times,” Ricciardo said.

“But just difficult that every time I tried to push, I 𒁃heard the lap times of the cars in front, and every time I tried to do it, maybe I could do it once but then I would lose a lot of time the next lap.

“For sure lots of things I 🎉can feedback to the team, and I’m sure lots that I can learn from as well.

“But if this is a bad result or a bad day, seventh, I think we are okay.ꦚ It is a good place to start from so I will keep learning and getting better.”