After taking his fourth pole position of the 2024 season and his second in consecutive weekends at the 2024 Italian GP, Lando Norris admitted he thought his efforts wouldn’t be rewarded after a mistake at the very first chicane in his final Q3 run cost him “a tenth-and-a-half”.
But the Briton didn’t hold back in his praise for the McLaren, pointing out how they came out on top with a front-row lock-out on a weekend where all the top four teams are very closely matched in terms of raw pace, especially in qualifying – and went even as far as saying the team wasn’t expecting to get such a great result out of qualifying day in Monza:
“[I’m] very [satisfied], because I think it’s probably been – like everyone’s seen – the closest build-up in FP1, FP2, FP3,” said Norris. “I think we just looked as good as the others. Nothing more, nothing less, honestly.
“So yeah, just expected a tough qualifying, and it was for sure. But I think for us to come away with a 1-2, to come away with another pole, was probably not quite what we were expecting, but in a good way, of course.
“[It was] a good qualifying, [but] I wouldn’t say the cleanest. Just difficult to put laps together around here, and when the margins are so small, you try and go for everything, but you can also pay a price. So, risk-reward in a lot of corners.
“But I think the risk that we had through it, and the set-up changes and things we made into qualifying, seemed to have made a good amount of progress, and we seemed very quick.”
Although the end result proved to be perfect for McLaren and for Norris himself, the two-time grand prix winner wasn’t completely convinced that his own performance would be enough to give him pole, admitting that he made a mistake in the first corner that he thought meant the lap was “over before it even started”:
“It just didn’t feel like a nailed lap,” he said. “I think all of us as drivers, when we go out in qualifying, you just want to put together a perfect lap – you want everything to flow.
“I tried pushing the braking a bit more for [turn] one, and I actually got [it] so much better.
“I then smashed the inside kerb of two because I turned in too early, so I was about a tenth and a half down just after turn one, so I was kind of like, ‘it’s over already before it even starts’.
“And I didn’t really expect to gain it [back], but then I nailed the second chicane and gained one and a half tenths back straight away, and then just made a couple hundredths of a gain in every corner from that point on.
“It just didn’t feel like a nailed lap. It didn’t feel as good as my lap last weekend, but clearly I’m still going to have a pole, which is a nice feeling.”
With McLaren’s surge in pace in the last few races, the championship race is hotting up again, and even more so considering Red Bull’s and Max Verstappen’s poor qualifying performance in Monza, which will see the championship leader starting the race from a lowly seventh place tomorrow. When asked if he was surprised to see his rival so far back, Norris admitted that the telltale sign of Verstappen’s struggles was the small margin that he had over his team-mate Sergio Perez, which goes against the general trend of the season, suggesting he was indeed finding some trouble in his RB20:
“I mean, I expect [Max] to come through and probably be behind us quite quickly. Their race pace looked very strong on Friday. They were on the better side of the graining and the degradation, so I expect them to probably be a bit more hopeful tomorrow.
“For some reason, they just didn’t seem to take those steps forward through qualifying. He still seemed quick, like in Q2. He was right there and ended up quicker than me, even on a used tyre.
“But clearly, and even his gap to [Sergio] Perez wasn’t as big as what it normally is, so I don’t know if he just struggled more with something or just didn’t put good enough laps in, but it’ll be for a reason, I’m sure.
“I’ll try and make the most of that.”
Looking ahead to the race, the McLaren driver believes the team will not have such a commanding edge on the field like it did in Zandvoort last week, and is expecting the newly-resurfaced track to prove a challenge for the cars and tyres in what could be a race of “unknowns” for the teams:
“I think when you look back to the Zandvoort, you could say yes. There was enough evidence that led us to believe we could have a very, very strong race.
“Here, less so, just because it’s been so close, but we’re still first and second, which means we have a good car, and that normally translates well into a good race car.
“But I think tomorrow there’s more question marks with graining and degradation and things like that.
You know, everyone’s probably a little bit more nervous of what can happen and what might happen, but we’re in the best position for it, so I’m excited to see what we can do.”
One of the biggest drawbacks for McLaren in recent races has been the race starts, with both Norris and team-mate Piastri failing to retain their positions off the line at the Dutch GP. Speaking on the improvements that have been made since then to avoid a repeat of such troubles, Norris is confident the Woking squad has put measures in place that are already delivering significant gains:
“I mean, [we’ve learned] a couple of things [from Zandvoort], for sure.
“We, of course, review things like we always do, and I feel like we’ve made progress so far with our practice launches and stuff like that, so we’ll just crack on and do our best.”
