Lando Norris admits of Turn 1 mistake in F1 Belgian GP that eventually made it difficult, as Andrea Stella expands on strategy and handling.
With little more hope with his F1 title rival starting a bit behind, McLaren and Norris hoped to chuck out points from Max Verstappen in Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps. But it all came undone in the opening lap when the Brit went wide at La Source.
That set him back in the order as he lost crucial positions, even to Verstappen in few laps time. There was recovery then as he was stuck in the DRS train behind Charles Leclerc and the Dutchman, as he had to be content with fifth place courtesy of George Russell’s DQ.
With the hope to gain points, Norris lost it to Verstappen in the fight for the drivers’ title. “I misjudged it, honestly,” the Brit admitted. “I just didn’t want to get taken out in Turn 1, so I’ve left the gap and just misjudged the exit a little bit. I lost four or five positions. And then it was just impossible to overtake, the overtaking sucked.
“I think there were very few overtakes actually done on track, most of it was just in the pit stops. There were some overtakes, but only when you had like a 10-lap tyre advantage. So otherwise a bit of a tough race with the overtaking. And I felt like we were quick, The car was quick. Just don’t feel like we maximised what we could have done,” summed up Norris.
On the team side, Stella explained the strategy decision behind Norris, with regards to extending his stint and if one-stop crossed their minds after the Lap 1 trouble. “When we extended Lando, we were definitely more optimistic that having extended by five laps on some other cars, we could have taken advantage of this better pace,” he said.
“But in reality, because of the two factors I said at the start, the low degradation and the difficulties in overtaking, we we could not and that started to be a bit of a symptom that maybe things are not exactly unfolding like we had anticipated. I need to review this one [one-stop], I have to say.
“Potentially need to understand if Lando was in the right position to do so, because obviously having extended, you tend to lose some positions on track. For us, the plan with Lando was robust. It’s just that we were a little surprised that we could not overtake. The other one, where we were surprised, and this could be also to do with how good Verstappen is as a driver, he made the medium last in the final stint like not many other drivers managed to do.
“And we were just expecting that these tyres would have fallen off and they didn’t. So we thought overtaking Verstappen would have been easy and it proved not to be the case. So I have to review whether with Lando it would have been a good idea to just to follow what Russell was doing,” summed up Stella, who backed Norris once again after the Brit came hard on himself for missing points.
Norris has been vocal about his shortcomings and Stella is standing with his driver. “First of all, these kind of situations, they are always very, very marginal,” he said. “I think Lando got a little distracted from what was happening on the inside and ran out of track. It’s marginal things like it’s just, I think, requires little adjustments here and there.
“Certainly, we work with Lando like we work with Oscar to try and see all the opportunities in which we can improve individually, but also collaborate better to either be more prepared or to use better our abilities and talents. So, it doesn’t necessarily change our attitude, but definitely gives us some elements to analyse as to how some of these missed opportunities manifest themselves.
“Like for Lando, for instance, it looks like there is statistically some opportunities that tend to happen in the early stages of the race. We need to check whether this is early stages of the race for a reason, or it’s just random. But like any other athlete, or any other driver, Lando himself, with the support the team would like to think, ‘what can I do better to make sure we capitalise on the good work we are doing?’ He was in a good starting position still. But then once we lost the position at the start with this low deg and difficult overtaking, we definitely made our life difficult.”
Here’s race start of Lando Norris: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-belgian-grand-prix-hamilton-jumps-perez-for-p2-as-leclerc-leads-away-on-the-race-start.1805828561398811280
Here’s Oscar Paistri, Andrea Stella on lost win chance
Here’s Max Verstappen on keeping Lando Norris behind
Here’s how F1 Belgian GP panned out
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