Photo Credit: McLaren Racing
Starting in P10 for the Monaco Grand Prix McLaren’s Lando Norris fought his way to finish just one place higher in P9.
One of the overtakes on the day was Norris’s pass on Yuki Tsunoda. The Briton made a great passing move down the main straight on the AlphaTuari driver in the wet conditions using DRS.
Being a lap behind Max Verstappen, Norris was behind the World Champion on the road and felt his pace was quicker. Indeed the times suggested that as he caught the Dutchman.
Such was his rapid pace, he was actually catching the group of Leclerc, Gasly and Sainz by a couple of seconds a lap, but the lack of pace in the dry meant the gap was insurmountable.
Speaking after the race Norris gave a humourous reply that he was looking for blue flags against the Red Bull.
“I was really hoping to pass him,” Norris joked.
“In the end the intermediate pace was I’d say the quickest on track, even quicker than Max. I wanted Max to get blue flags, probably the first time in his life he’d get blue flags!”
Norris was also disappointed to lose potentially two or three places due to his extra pit stop right before his swap to inters. He had been running in a very solid P10 until that point.
“The only mistake was we boxed onto the hard tyre before the rain for 2 laps and then went onto the intermediate. We didn’t expect it to rain a lot, the team told me it would be very brief so then I was happy to box with the information I had. We should have waited a couple more laps to see what did happen and then that lost us 30 seconds which would have put us up 2 or 3 positions”
Finally Norris takes some positives away from Monaco due to his pace in wet conditions, but he conceded their dry pace was very poor.
“A lot of positives, mainly the intermediate pace, the dry pace was pretty shocking, we were pretty slow, Yuki was a lot quicker than us. From the dry not a lot of positives, on the intermediates it’s less about the car and more about the driver and the risk you want to take. I was risking a lot,” concluded Norris.
