Although Lando Norris finished fourth in the Formula 1 race in Spielberg, he demands further progress. The McLaren is faster, but the known problems are still there.
With fourth place, Lando Norris achieved by far the best McLaren result in the 2023 Formula 1 season so far in Spielberg on Sunday. The Brit scored twelve World Championship points in one fell swoop, after McLaren had only had 17 points all year.
The update for the MCL60 that McLaren brought to Spielberg should undoubtedly have played a large part in this. “The car just goes faster around every corner, but the way you have to drive is exactly the same,” reports Norris.
“And that’s the next problem we have to tackle,” emphasizes the Brit despite the strong result on Sunday, because: “The things we’ve complained about all year are still the same, just on a higher level Level.”
“So it’s not just about downforce, it’s also about handling and how you drive the car,” he explains. It’s no use simply adding “a bunch of downforce” to the car. “It’s more of a technical thing that we need to tackle and understand,” Norris said.
McLaren driver Norris: Spielberg pace “a good surprise”
“If we can do that, I’m confident that we can fight the faster cars in front of us,” said the Briton optimistically. Because that will help on a fast lap, but above all it will ensure better consistency in the race pace.
About this he says: “I think it’s helpful on this track [in Spielberg] to be fast because the faster you are at this track the better you are with the tires in a way because we are very strong in the high speed corners and that’s where they degrade here.”
“I was a bit nervous before the race because I thought the race pace would let us down today. But it was actually better than expected, which was a good surprise,” said Norris, who crossed the finish line in fifth place on Sunday.
Because of the subsequent penalty against Carlos Sainz, he even moved up one place later.
“[Es ist] still not great Fernando [Alonso] was definitely faster, a little bit every lap, and I crashed in almost every corner,” he reports.
McLaren driver Norris has a long duel with Mercedes star Hamilton
“But fifth place [vor der Sainz-Strafe] shows that we’ve made a good step forward, and I’m very happy with that,” said Norris, who was dueling for fourth place with Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes at the start of the race.
There he lost “some” time, because he was actually faster than the record world champion before him. Norris reports, “He struggled more on the medium tires than on the hard tires. It was just a matter of shaking him off the DRS.”
“As soon as I did that, I was able to pull away a bit,” he explains, adding: “Our biggest problem today was tire wear. I managed to overtake Lewis, build up a decent lead and then he came at the end of the stint back on me before we pitted.”
The duel with the Mercedes then took care of itself anyway because Hamilton had to serve a five-second penalty in the pits.
Hamilton fell far behind Norris, who ended up being “a little nervous” because Fernando Alonso was putting pressure behind him.
McLaren driver Norris warns: Must not overestimate Spielberg’s result
The Spaniard was 8.5 seconds behind him at times, but came within four seconds of the McLaren at the finish. “Did I expect to be faster than the Astons? Probably not,” explains Norris. That’s why it was important to get a lead early on in the last stint.
“Although they didn’t look particularly fast all weekend in terms of lap times, their race pace is usually very strong, and it was today, too. We were just fast enough,” breathes the Briton.
On the other hand, it wasn’t a surprise for him that the Mercedes works team was also beaten, because they didn’t have a good weekend overall. Nevertheless, Norris does not want to overstate the strong Spielberg result.
“I think that [Spielberg in der Vergangenheit] has always been our best race of the year, so I’ll make sure to share that with everyone on the team so we can keep a cool head ahead of next weekend,” Norris announced.
Incidentally, teammate Oscar Piastri should also get the update at the next race in Silverstone. This was in Spielberg only with Norris on the car.