Lando Norris was left surprised by how the performance improvement in F1 Chinese GP after a podium finish behind Max Verstappen.
Coming into the F1 Chinese GP, Norris did not expect the race pace to challenge for podium. They reckoned Ferrari will have an upperhand on them apart from Red Bull, but it turned out to be the opposite after pole in sprint race.
Norris did drop out but he had decent pace which he showed in the grand prix as well. They didn’t change anything on the car from Saturday to Sunday, but the cooler temperature seemingly helped them to overcome Sergio Perez and the Ferrari pair.
“I mean, there was a big improvement on Sunday compared to Saturday,” said Norris. “So I think that’s why we were probably a bit surprised. I was surprised to be sitting in the press conference on Sunday, but it was a nice surprise of course. Difficult to say, we’ve been struggling a little bit. I’m sure everyone does, with certain things throughout the whole season, which have always been limiting us.
“It probably felt similar-ish to Australia, in Australia, I felt comfortable and the car felt pretty good as well. So just much better in the race, things came alive, the conditions cooled down, the wind calmed down and both of these things, I think, played into our hands a little bit more. So, that’s why in sprint, if you asked me, what do we expect for the race, it definitely was nowhere near top three, or even maybe top five.
“So a pleasant surprise. And yeah, the car felt much better. But obviously, not quick enough to match the Red Bulls. What did change? We were just quicker than we thought. That’s the limitations, the places we expected to struggle, probably a lot more, we didn’t struggle as much in. So these longer corners, like Turn 1, have always been a big weakness for us. And part of Turn 1 was probably better than we’re expecting.
“And like the second part was probably as we were expecting. So it’s just we’re still learning about the car. It’s as simple as that. This track is very different. The tarmac is quite odd. Maybe that played into our hands a bit more than we were thinking, maybe with the old tarmac, we would have struggled a bit more. So just little things.
“We’re not making it up. We’re giving our honest opinion on where we want to be. I think if we were to go into a weekend, and we knew we’re going to be strong, we’ve said it. So more often than not, we don’t feel that optimistic, because all year we’ve been behind Red Bull, all year we’ve been behind Ferrari, there’s no reason for us to suddenly think we should be ahead.
“But yeah, nothing really pointed to us having an amazing race, especially the Sprint race, which was our best kind of version of events of what can go down. But things just went to plan and kind of went very smoothly from that point onwards. I didn’t make a mistake in Turn 1 and go off. It’s a good start. And got past the Aston and then you can just control the race. And that was very different,” summed up Norris.
Team boss Andrea Stella further expanded into what could have helped McLaren in the course of the weekend. He was equally surprised like how Norris was – but it was a pleasant one after finishing second on the road and seemingly on merit.
“In fairness, like in the sprint – we didn’t see that we had that race pace that would have allowed us to finish ahead of Ferrari,” said Stella. “In line somehow with what we expected before coming here. So, it’s a bit of a surprise especially in terms of race pace, I would say. I think over a single lap we know that we are strong when we have a new soft rubber.
“We can do a good job for a single lap. But then when we put laps one after the other we tend to lose some performance. But in the race, I think somehow the track conditions and the cold conditions – the fact that there was no sunshine helped keep the rear tyres under control. And therefore we could use the strengths of the car like we saw in qualifying.
“I think it’s a circuit in which there wasn’t much front limitation. Since we went to the wide tyres China doesn’t seem to be as difficult for the front tyres as it was in the past. And, at the same time I think the conditions helped retain grip on the rear because the rear axle especially today was not overheating.
“While if we look at the sprint, I think there were we had a lot of a bit of overheating like Ferrari seemed to be more comfortable Max had a huge advantage. I think you have these situations when there’s degradation, but it was more under control. So, I think we struggled a little bit more in front limited circuit and here it wasn’t.
“And the rear axle, I think was under control because of the cold conditions. So a little bit of a combination of factors, which helped in the performance of our car. I think also some tweaks we made to the setup after the sprint they did help the race pace because we changed the car with a view to improving the race pace rather than qualifying. So we were actually surprised to see that still in qualifying we were decent, but it looks like it did help with the race. So multiple factors not a single silver bullet.”
During the gap between the weekends in China and Miami, Norris had a minor hiccup while celebrating Kings Day in Amsterdam on Saturday with Martin Garrix. Images surfaced online of him in bandage on his face, after he cut his nose due to broken glass.
Here’s a video: https://x.com/lando_mp3/status/1784536362781139417
Here’s some photos: https://x.com/iLUVL4N/status/1784596059995447790
https://x.com/leclercsletters/status/1784259416058921254
Here’s Oscar Piastri on Lance Stroll hit
Here’s Lando Norris on VSC and lack of fight from Sergio Perez
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