“It was just a frustrating day,” said Lando Norris after Friday in Spielberg. McLaren truly had a day to forget with various problems at Norris and Daniel Ricciardo’s disappointing exit in Q1.
Norris had made it into Q2, but couldn’t get past 15th and last place – more than 20 seconds back. A supposed brake problem prevented the McLaren driver from achieving a better result. “The brakes just didn’t work the way they should,” he says.
“I can be lucky that for some reason it works for one lap – like in Q1,” says Norris. But in Q2 there wasn’t much going on for him: “Every time I slammed on the brakes in Q2, the brake pedal went to the floor and the car went straight,” he says.
“I can’t do much there, except brake much earlier and much less, but then I’m just slow.”
He doesn’t know exactly what the problem was either, but he does know that his team definitely has to get it under control before the sprint. “I can’t drive that,” he clarifies.
Even problems in training
But it wasn’t the first problem for the youngster this Friday in Spielberg. The first practice session also ended prematurely for him after he had to park the car smoking at the side of the track.
Bad luck: McLaren had just replaced the engine, turbocharger, MGU-H, MGU-K and exhaust and installed new parts before the event. Before qualifying, the team rebuilt an old power unit in Norris’ MCL36.
“It was just a frustrating day,” he says. “We should have been a lot further up the field but we aren’t. There’s still a long way to go to the weekend to come back. I’m a bit down right now but at the same time we have a lot of opportunities with the sprint and the long race on Sunday. From start to finish a lot can happen.”
Ricciardo: Bitter end in Q1
For teammate Daniel Ricciardo, however, the disappointing season continued. For the first time since the season opener in Bahrain, the Australian retired in Q1 in 16th place and suffered the team’s ninth defeat in eleven qualifying sessions – against a Norris with brake problems.
“Retiring in Q1 is never great and not what we wanted here,” he argues. “After the first practice we had to solve a few things but it wasn’t enough to get eliminated in Q1 so I don’t want to use that as an excuse.”
“We just lack some pace, and when everything is so tight on such a short lap, that’s very valuable. 30 thousandths would have gotten me into Q2, but the lap times are what they are,” said Ricciardo. “We have to work on that.”