Lando Norris was happy with his P6 finish after a chaotic Australian Grand Prix. The McLaren driver puts the various incidents down to drivers struggling with cold tyres throughout the Grand Prix.
“The team has done a good job…”
After what was a positive weekend for McLaren which saw the struggling team net their first points of the season, Lando Norris shared his thoughts on the race as well as his team’s struggles so far this season.
Speaking after the race, Norris hailed the team’s performance after what he deemed their “best weekend so far” having struggled in the opening two races of the season. Norris’ P6 finish coupled with teammate Piastri finishing P8 netted the team 12 valuable constructors’ championship points.
“For sure, our best weekend so far,” Norris said post-race. “I said it yesterday. My comments and my feelings yesterday, I didn’t have my hopes too high for today. But actually, since lap 1, the pace comparing to some of the cars around us like the AlphaTauri, like the Haas was a little bit closer.
“So I felt a little bit quicker. I could race against them. I could actually have some fun and attack and have a bit of racing action. So a good day you know. P6 and some reasonable points for us. Same for Oscar, to have points at the same time. We just stayed out of trouble, which was the biggest challenge today. Avoiding the people locking up and causing chaos.
“So yeah I’m happy. The team has done a good job and we deserved it.”
“I feel like I’m gonna crash on every single corner…”
Expanding on his point of other drivers suffering lock ups and causing incidents, Norris claims he by no means is blaming poor driving standards. Instead the McLaren driver referred to the difficulty experienced in getting the tyres up to temperature, particularly on the slow laps to the grid prior to each restart.
“I don’t think it’s out of stupidity,” Norris said when asked of the multiple incidents seen during the Grand Prix. “I’m not saying anything like that. I mean it is tricky in such cold conditions. You would think a heated tyre to like 60 to 70 degrees would give us some grip, and it doesn’t.
“At the end, on the final lap I feel like I’m gonna crash on every single corner it’s that bad and the tyres are still like 65 degrees. It’s difficult and with such a slow warm up lap before the restarts, you can’t get any tyre temperature in.”
He went on to explain that despite his comments he was not placing blame on anyone. He did, however, express some degree of frustration at having to avoid other driver’s incidents throughout the race.
“For me, and I think for most people, it’s obvious that the tyres are cold into turn 1 and you’re going to lock fronts. When you’re racing it’s always hard- you always wanna brake later than the guy next to you. Sometimes you pay the price for that.
“So many times then I felt like I just had to avoid other people. It’s racing sometimes. I’m not blaming anyone or anything. Just avoiding people seemed like a bigger challenge for me.”
“When we open DRS we don’t really go any quicker.”
Despite a positive result from McLaren, as mentioned earlier, Norris did not go into Sunday’s race with high expectations. He puts this down to the team’s struggles in qualifying which he admits presented themselves once again in Australia.
Norris says the team’s qualifying issues stem from poor performance from their DRS. He claims their top speed gain when DRS is negligible while other teams around them seem to gain a much bigger boost from the system.
“I think that qualifying is a weakness for us, because we’re so poor in DRS conditions,” he admitted. “When we open DRS we don’t really go any quicker. The majority seem to gain a lot more speed than what we do. So when you’re in DRS, which is four times around [Albert Park], we’re at a big loss, I guess through our own wrongdoing and knowledge.”
