McLaren’s Lando Norris described the start of the Belgian Grand Prix as ‘painful’ after he dropped to 18th in the early stages of the race. Exposed to McLaren’s lack of straight-line speed, Norris tumbled like a stone off the seventh grid. After that, when I changed to hard tires, things got worse and I lost even more places.
However, McLaren putting Norris on soft tyres, which helped him recover in the final laps of the race, showed great pace in clear air and finished in the top seven. Norris was under pressure from Esteban Ocon in the closing stages, but eventually finished seventh. Reflecting on his start at Spa, Norris admitted it was “impossible to overtake” with McLaren’s downforce levels. “I was barely able to get into eighth gear,” said Norris. “On the straight I was very slow. I couldn’t defend, I couldn’t attack. It was impossible to overtake. I couldn’t overtake a single person on the straight. It was too late. And it was all in the corners. It was a pain. “It was very painful in the beginning. It was to put the soft tires on, and that was laps 24 and 25. At some point I was going to put the soft tires on again, but somehow I ended up in 7th.10 I think we undercut a car about 100. I was quite surprised by that. Of course it was a nice surprise, but I thought we would be boxing again. I pushed too much and thought the race was over.I used the tires and stayed in 7th place.I stayed in front of Esteban who was closing in pretty early.I’m happy.” Midway through the race Norris had a problem with the steering. There was speculation that he had one, but Norris denied it when asked after the race. “Who said that? No, we were just late,” said Norris. “Before the DRS activation zone, everyone was overtaking me. To be honest, I was catching Alex coming out of Turn 1. Coming out of Turn 1, I had the new tires and he had the old tires. But I think at the end of the straight we were three or four car lengths behind.We didn’t overtake a single car on the straight today.” “It’s a pain. We made a mistake. We’ve already admitted it. We had too much downforce and it didn’t do us any good, we have to look at that and try to do a better job next time.”
2023-07-31 10:12:28
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