Lando Norris had one of his greatest weekends in Formula One on Sunday at the British Grand Prix as the 23-year-old finished 2nd at his home event.
The Brit took the lead off the line because of a poor start by Max Verstappen. He would cede the lead a few laps later, but the rest of the race he ran in P2.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t smooth sailing. On the restart following the Safety Car, Norris on hards had Lewis Hamilton behind him on softs.
Photo credit: McLaren Racing
The younger Brit explained the various strengths and weaknesses of the MCL60 and W14 over the course of a lap at Silverstone.
“Yeah, it was a very good one. It was exciting. I really did want to hold on to P2, so I did everything I could and a lot of it was trying to get the temperature in the tyres for the restart.
“But luckily as he [Hamilton] said the first half a lap they were very strong, even in Qualifying they were up on us all the way until Maggotts, Becketts section. We were just very good always in the last sector. Not the best, maybe with DRS. That’s where Red Bull are extremely quick. But they’re very good in the first half so Turn 3, Turn 4, Turns 6 and 7, Lewis could quite easily get on me.
“But then we’ve always been very good in high speed and now it’s a very good strength of ours, it keeps the tyres in a good condition and I was a lot of laps quite easily flat through Turn 9 and yeah, two downshifts into Maggotts and Becketts and I could always give myself that safety margin that I wanted.”
Hamilton got up the inside at Luffield on lap 40 on his softer tyres and looked like he could take the place. However, Norris ultimately prevailed on the run down towards Copse as the McLaren proved to be quicker in a straight-line.
Norris admitted his call to go with a lower downforce level was a crucial factor in holding the position.
“But it was nice coming out side-by-side. It was close, when I saw him I throw it up the inside in Turn 7.
“And yeah, I’m sure the fans were loving it at the same time but I chose a slightly lower downforce level yesterday which was a bit of a risk but I thought there might be a racing situation where one or two kph might have helped me out and today I did exactly that.
“So I’m thanking my own decision to choose a lower downforce.”
The restart was certainly an interesting one for McLaren. While Verstappen and Hamilton went to used softs, McLaren put Norris on hards in spite of his request for used softs as well.
“It’s a very difficult one to answer. Would I have preferred the soft? Would the soft have made me be under less stress for the first three laps after the Safety Car? I think absolutely.
“They [McLaren] told me [that Verstappen and Hamilton had] new softs. I didn’t think they did, but they told us.”
Norris believes they made life harder for themselves by choosing the hards and will discuss it with the team.
“We would have been in the same position [as Verstappen and Hamilton]. So I don’t see why we shouldn’t have done it.
“I feel like we put ourselves under a lot more pressure to try and get a hard tyre to work with a Safety Car restart with only 10 laps to go pretty much. It’s one we’ll talk about.
“I was telling them to think of the softs quite a bit, insinuating it as much as I could but then they just told me ‘you’re on the hards’.
“Not really what I wanted, but it’s still worked out.”
