Norris says he would have been worse off without the latest updates
Lando Norris has no regrets about his McLaren Formula 1 team bringing an update package to a sprint weekend despite struggling to optimise the MCL38 with only one practice session.
Norris insisted that he would be worse off without the new package, which is highlighted by a new front wing, despite admitting that the car was far from optimised for the track.
Norris started the Austin sprint in fourth and ran second for most of the event after making a good start, although Carlos Sainz demoted him to third on the last lap. He thus lost two points to winner Max Verstappen.
Asked by this writer if he would be better off had he had a stable car with no new parts – as is the case with Ferrari this weekend – Norris made his views clear.
“No, I’m very happy we brought updates here, otherwise I’d be even further down the grid,” he said. “The team have done a good job to get the bits here. We’ve had some great races lately, like Singapore and other places, but everyone thought we were easily and way far ahead of everyone.
“And clearly we’re not. Even if you go back to Baku, both Red Bull and Ferrari were quicker than us. I think we’re close. But even when I look at the data comparing to yesterday, we’re a long way off of what Ferrari could achieve, what Mercedes could achieve.
“So, yeah, I think it’s going to be tough. It’s an opportunity for us to improve into qualifying, but these upgrades have made us go quicker, so we’ve been even further down without them.”
Norris said he was happy with the sprint outcome, despite being pipped by Sainz at the end.
“It was as a good start, a good Turn 1, which was nice to have, and immediately behind Max. It was pretty straightforward from that point onwards, George [Russell] was pushing a lot in the beginning of the race, clearly a bit too much, and he paid the price. I didn’t think I would ever be able to get Max.
“We’ve been struggling a bit all weekend, so my chance of getting Max was tough, but I did the best I could to manage my tyres and things like that. But at the end of the race, the Ferraris were at another level comparing to us.
“I did my best to try and hold on but there was that was pretty much zero chance I would ever hold on to second place today. From fourth, happy we moved up, we put up a good fight, but we just didn’t have the pace this weekend.”
Asked what he’d learned from the sprint he said: “Once the front tyres are gone, we’re quite slow! We didn’t get a lot of practice, we didn’t get a lot of running in FP1.
“And it’s hard to judge everything all in one go. And with tarmac being different, and bumps being different is hard to optimise the setup. So we’ll review everything and see what improvements we can make.”
Adam Cooper F1 