Lando Norris believes he could have beaten Charles Leclerc and got a front row seat, but after his mistake he’s happy he was able to finish third in Imola’s qualifying at all. That was not necessarily to be expected in advance.
Norris was able to secure the third fastest lap in the rainy Q3 before the action was interrupted by the red flag for the stranded Valtteri Bottas. There was no further attempt for the pilots, since Norris brought the session to an end with a departure in the Acque Minerali.
That annoys the Briton, who believes it could have gone even better as his first lap wasn’t ideal: “I would have liked to have had the last lap because we didn’t do a lap with full power, full battery,” says the McLaren driver on “Sky”.
“We did two laps in a row at the beginning of Q3, and when you do that, you split the battery 50/50. If I had managed a lap with 100 percent battery, there would have been a good three or four tenths left,” said Norris, who was 0.353 seconds behind Ferrari’s Leclerc.
However, Norris has to admit that Leclerc would very likely have improved again. “But if he made a mistake and I didn’t, I could have got it,” he says. “There was a small chance of a slightly better place, but that didn’t happen because of my mistake.”
Norris: McLaren still far from Ferrari and Red Bull
“So I have to be satisfied with third place and that’s a very good result for us,” he said.
Because under normal circumstances McLaren would hardly have penetrated into these regions. Daniel Ricciardo’s sixth place is more realistic, because the team cannot yet compete with Red Bull and Ferrari, despite an upgrade of the MCL36.
“We’ve got some small upgrades this weekend. Small things, nothing that would have gotten us third from where we were,” says Norris. “We’re still a long way from the Ferraris and the Red Bulls.”
“When the conditions were a bit more consistent in the morning, we were closer to where we should be, further back,” he said. “If it’s more about the driver taking risks, pushing the tires and pushing the limits in wet and dry conditions, then I did a good job today so I think I have to be happy with myself and my work. “