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Norris, according to his own admission, did not have enough speed to keep up with Verstappen on Sunday at the Red Bull Ring. Despite securing his second consecutive start on the front row of the Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix, Lando Norris believes that McLaren’s pace was simply insufficient to challenge Max Verstappen, who claimed pole position. Norris was less than a tenth of a second behind Verstappen during Friday’s Sprint qualifying and initially challenged him for victory during Saturday morning’s Sprint qualifying. However, Verstappen increased his pace during the GP qualifying. The difference by which Verstappen surpassed Norris, over four tenths of a second on a 64-second lap, is significant. Norris hinted that his laps on Saturday were lacking something compared to the previous day, while trying to explain why his McLaren was behind Verstappen’s dominant performance. “It was a bit tougher today than yesterday due to the wind and conditions,” Norris said. “But compared to Max, we are much further behind, closer to the Mercedes and Ferraris. So, part of it is my fault. Yesterday, I probably did a better lap and made up for part of it, but today there were at least one or two tenths that could have been gained by doing a very good lap on my side, but it still wouldn’t have been enough to beat Max. He did a good job, and Red Bull made a significant improvement from yesterday, clearly showing that they were much faster than what we could achieve today. So, we are still in P2, still on the front row, and I hope we can convert that into a positive result tomorrow.” During Saturday morning’s Sprint qualifying, Norris had the opportunity to challenge Verstappen for a race win but couldn’t. He briefly took the lead with a daring move at Turn 3 on lap 5 but lost it to Verstappen and dropped to third place behind his McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri, after leaving the door open.
However, besides this mistake, Norris is not sure if he would have enough speed in race conditions to challenge Verstappen for the checkered flag and predicts another tough competitor for the Sunday Grand Prix considering the speed of the Dutchman in qualifying.
“I am aware of my mistake,” Norris mentioned in relation to the Sprint.
“It was clearly evident. But based on the speed advantage Max had today, it will probably extend to tomorrow as well.
“So, even today, I’m not sure if I would have been able to keep up with what Max was capable of if it was just between him and me.
“So, in today’s qualifying, it became evident that they were significantly ahead of us. So, we’ll see.”
However, Norris was not completely pessimistic, stating: “It’s a new day. Circumstances can change, and the weather is expected to get very hot again. Lately, the races have been favorable for us.
“It has been one of our strengths compared to qualifying. So, I’m excited to see what we can achieve.”
