Lando Norris was happy with a “good” P2 lap in a more difficult Qualifying session than Sprint Qualifying yesterday afternoon.
A gap of 0.404s separated McLaren’s Lando Norris from a dominant Max Verstappen in qualifying ahead of tomorrow’s Austrian Grand Prix with Norris admitting a stronger lap could have seen him closer to Verstappen.
Despite his admission that he had left some pace on the table, Norris believes McLaren did not have the pace to match the resurgent Max Verstappen in this afternoon session. Speaking immediately after the session, Norris admitted more difficult conditions hampered his fight for pole this afternoon.
“[It was a] good quali,” Norris said following the session. “I think as much as we could do today. Max was in a league of his own, clearly much quicker than what we had, so I’m happy. Tricky conditions. Quite a bit more difficult than it was yesterday. A lot closer so, more difficult to get the laps in and to perfect the laps. But it was good enough and I’ll take it.”
When pushed for more information on the session, a somewhat downbeat sounding Norris explained that the team seemed to have lost pace in comparison to Red Bull, falling closer to the pace of the teams behind.
“It was pretty good but not amazing,” Norris said of his performance. “Just a bit trickier today than it was yesterday for wind and conditions and stuff like that. Relatively we were much further back, closer to the Mercedes’ and Ferrari’s than we were to relative to Max.
“A little bit is in my lap. I think yesterday I definitely did a better lap and made up for some of it. I think today there was at least one or two tenths in just doing a very good lap from my side. Definitely not enough to get Max, so he did a good job and Red Bull made a good step from where they were yesterday and clearly were a lot quicker than what we could achieve today.
“Still P2, still front row and hopefully we can turn that into something good tomorrow.”
Looking ahead to tomorrow’s Grand Prix, Norris was asked how he plans to approach his second race of the weekend alongside Verstappen. Having briefly gained the lead from Verstappen early in today’s Sprint before falling back to P3 behind his teammate, Norris joked the plan would be “the same except not”.
“Just tidying up a few things from before,” Norris replied, referencing his error in this morning’s Sprint. “I know what I did wrong, it was obviously very clear. From the pace advantage that’s probably going to carry into something tomorrow as well.
“I’m not sure even today, if I had a perfect run at things and it was just between Max and myself, I’m not sure I would have had the pace to quite keep up with what Max was able to do. Then into quali today, it showed they were just a pretty good step ahead of us.
“We’ll see. It’s another day and things can change. Conditions are going to be very warm again. The races have been good to us lately, it’s been one of our strengths compared to qualifying, so [I’m] excited to see what we can do.”
