Lando Norris did an amazing job in qualifying by grabbing P3, but he knew that on Sunday he would struggle against a “quicker” Ferrari.
The McLaren driver isn’t disappointed with the weekend, saying that the team is right where it predicted to be. However, he added how trying to keep up the pace with faster cars, especially at the beginning of the stint, was hurting the tires and slightly compromising his race.
“It was as expected, to be honest with you,” he said when asked if he anticipated losing track positions to Ferrari.
“It was hard at the beginning when you’re trying to push to keep up with a quicker car or push to stay ahead of the Ferraris, which were quicker.
“You hurt the tires more, and it’s just kind of like a bit of a spiral, fighting a losing battle out there.
“So, not a bad day. We are where we kind of expected to be in the end, which is behind Ferrari. It’s where we’ve been all year.
“Yesterday we just excelled, I put in some very strong laps, and made us look maybe a bit too good. And today it was a bit more back to reality.”
Norris also explained McLaren’s strategy and why he boxed in the same lap as Charles Leclerc did, hinting that, in hindsight, he would’ve chosen a different strategy.
“I think we did what was best at the time, but it’s always hard to know. Maybe we didn’t expect Charles to box? I’m not sure,” Norris explained.
“He was close enough that you would kind of want to say, ‘Yeah, if we did something different, maybe we had a better chance’.
“I think we covered George [Russell], which I feel like we maybe didn’t need to do, and because we tried to cover George, we boxed at the same time as Charles.
“I for sure could have gone another five, six laps, created a tire delta, and then come back through like Carlos did. So just an opinion, but it’s something we’ll discuss and review.”