Lando Norris again felt there was a chance to win F1 Spanish GP certainly, as Andrea Stella explores if McLaren lost another victory.
Having finished second in F1 Spanish GP, McLaren’s Norris thought it was another race where he could have won considering the pace of his car, where he feels that they were the faster team than Red Bull and Max Verstappen during the course of the weekend.
Norris reckoned the strategy was actually correct from McLaren this time unlike Canada. He defended going long in the stint as he felt the biggest problem that left him reeling was being unable to get through Mercedes’ George Russell as quickly.
That made the difference eventually which left him too much time to recover in the last stint where he was pushing all out when Verstappen started to struggle. It was another win that went away and perhaps one of the better chances in recent times.
He enjoyed catching Verstappen, while also the battle with Russell. From the team’s side, Stella expanded on the strategy calls made whether in Canada and or Spain. He knows how small details will now matter considering how close the field is getting.
The pace is very similar between Red Bull and McLaren as of now and smaller things will matter. Regarding the self critical nature of Norris, Stella welcomed that side of the Brit as it shows the mindset where the driver is at and also how he sees the situation.
Overall race –
Norris: “The race, not good enough, simply because we should have won. I think to answer the question you asked Max, I think we had the quickest car. But I just lost it at the start and then I couldn’t get past George for the first stint. I think we were quite easily best car out there. I just didn’t do a good enough job off the line. And then that one thing cost me everything. So from Turn 2 onwards, 10 out of 10, I don’t think I could have done much more. And I think as a team, we did the perfect strategy. And I was very happy with what we did. But yeah, the one part at the start, the 1% elsewhere wasn’t good enough. Regarding strategy in Spain than Canada, because that was more a decision, an incorrect decision or lack of decision-making. We were definitely not the quickest car in Montreal. Mercedes was easily the quickest car. But today, we were the quickest. We had the best car. I had the best car out there. And I didn’t maximise it. The start’s down to me. doing what I get told and executing that. And without that, or with a good start, we easily should have won.”
Strategy to cover Verstappen was better –
Norris: “No. I mean, I gave myself a good four five four laps of tyre advantage. It’s impossible to know. No one can say whether it’s the correct or incorrect thing. It made my life much easier to overtake George. I still had to overtake George is my point. I was racing George until halfway through the race. And once I kind of passed him, then I was in my own race and trying to race against Max. So, no. I know people had the same comments about our strategy last weekend in Canada on the second pit stop onto the slick tyre. I think our strategy was better. I overtook George. I overcut him. And he got past me because he was quicker, not because of any other reason. So… No, the team did a good job. The strategy is very strong, has been for a lot of the year. We made a couple of mistakes here and there, but no, I think we’re probably the best strategy, so I’m happy with that.”
Catching Verstappen in the last stint –
Norris: “I was feeling good at that point. It was more… could I close the gap in the amount of laps that I had? Which was always the bigger question and the question on my mind while driving. But I was good. I was comfortable. And the pace was very strong at that rate. It wasn’t the longest final stint, so I didn’t know if we were going to get to that time in the stint when I really start to catch. I think really like the last three laps, the gaps were pretty big in terms of how much it was coming down. Yeah, it’s a hard one. I don’t know if maybe I pushed a bit too much in the beginning and struggled a little bit more at the end.
“It’s very difficult to judge these things. Difficult to describe, but I was feeling good. And I think… yeah I was confident in the car which was the main thing. I understood how to drive it and get the most out of it. So I think I’m still improving in that area. that’s something I’ve not been super comfortable with and the knowledge of how do I extract the most out of this car. This weekend’s been a very good step forward I think and hopefully I would have to carry that on into the next few. But yeah, I’m confident and those parts of the race I’m like, ‘OK I have clean air’ I can kind of push and as long as i hopefully get a couple DRS’s from back markers and hopefully they could help me out a little bit to try catch.”
Fight with Russell –
Norris: “Yeah, I mean, I made George defend Turn 1, which kind of won me everything from that point onwards. He defended into one. Then I could kind of get the cut back. And you can do that on all of these corners. They’re quite wide. And once you kind of defend, you can easily get a cut back onto the following corner. So, I had him on the outside of three. I was quite surprised in Turn 4. But I had so much understeer in Turn 4 all day. And the Mercs had a lot of front end in Turn 4. He could carry a lot more speed in four, get back to the outside, but then I could cut back on Turn 5 on the exit and get him into Turn 7. So it was a good fight. It cost me a lot of time and hurt my gap to Max in the end. But yeah, it was pleasant, it was on the edge, was close, bit disrespectful.”
Fine margins, Verstappen not making mistakes –
Norris: “I mean, Max is not making any mistakes, really. So I think as soon as you make one little mistake, they’re going to be ahead. I think, honestly, if you look at it yesterday, they probably had a slightly quicker car, in my opinion. Could be wrong. But in my opinion, I think they had a slightly quicker car. In Canada, we had the quicker car. But obviously, I still managed to finish second. So it’s about the smaller things at the minute. But every track is a bit different. Like we’ve seen Red Bull struggle a little bit more a few races ago. I think we’re still proving to be one of the most consistent teams at every track that we’ve been to. Mercedes were quick as last weekend in Canada, and now probably a little bit behind here. So it’s a little bit up and down. And I think we just need to stay doing what we’re doing, because it’s good enough for the time being. But it’s just trying to eliminate a couple of those small, little mistakes.”
Strategy in Canada –
Stella: “I think we would have done exactly the same strategy when leading, because we are in Barcelona. You know in Monaco, we would have done a different strategy. We were very surprised when we saw people go in lap 16-17. For me, that’s a bit of self inflicted pain at this circuit, no? Because the degradation is so high, overtaking is easy, so, actually, we thought this is going to bring us back in the race. And we went for our race, which we just lost a little bit too long behind Russell at the start, or otherwise would have come up. The race would have come to us at the end of the 66 laps. So actually, I would like to praise the good work of our strategiests, because somehow this is what we had in mind. And it sort of unfolded the way we thought it would. Should people just feel the pressure to go and pit – but obviously sometimes the pressure to go and pit depends on how you use your tyres. And sometimes you just have to pit, if that makes sense. But here it can be very costly if you start pitting too early.”
Small details to decide –
Stella: “It’s the second time that the gaps in qualifying are under 20 milliseconds, like it’s… everything getting extremely tight, which means that the details, they do become very important – because you have no margin in which you can compensate any little imprecision. I would say that, as for today, the main factor is that we couldn’t defend the first position in Barcelona – this is not necessarily a surprise, because you have such a long run to corner one, the cars run high downforce, so as soon as you gain a bit of slipstream, it makes you so much faster than the car ahead, which meant that Lando was not in condition to defend this pole position. And I actually appreciated his like wise approach whereby to stay out of trouble, the race we know is going to come to us. Just the time lost behind Russell, it was too much. So, I will say that couple of positions lost at corner one and the time lost behind Russell they are the two decisive factors. The pitstop probably another one second. But in fairness, even the one second like…we needed, if we were behind Verstappen at the start, if we had been behind Verstappen at the start [and in front of Russell]. We could have played our cards with good chances.”
Self critical nature of Norris –
Stella: “The fact that Lando is self critical is a style. And sometimes we react very much on the style rather than on the content of things. Actually Lando’s start wasn’t very bad at all. It was a decent start, like he is almost one car ahead of Max. The fact is that Russell got the double slipstream of Lando and Max, and he just…and in corner one Lando was just very wise, because it’s a second and your race is gone. And that’s not the way we want to race. We want to stay in the race. So I think from opportunity point of view, as was said before, it’s more of a detail. Okay, you can do an even better start, you would have been one meter ahead. But it’s very, very marginal. And the fact that Lando might have been harsh on himself in terms of the responsibility for that, I think is just the style aspect.
“You know, like some other drivers would have complained with… “Ah, Barcelona, the straight is too long.” Actually. I like that people look at their own opportunities before thinking that the world plays against you. I mean, that’s the way you actually work on the variables that you can control. We are, you know, we don’t overreact to the style of Lando being tough with himself. Certainly, I’m sure this is something that he will keep fine tuning over the years. But from Lando point of view, I think he just drove very well the entire weekend. And you know, if he’s upset for a P2, finishing two seconds from Max, then this is really good news for everyone, including Formula 1, because it means that we have races. And it means that with little details, like defending your pole position, we finally can have some different winners than Max.”
Pace against Red Bull –
Stella: “The race pace was very, very similar. Very, very similar. I think the fact that we were faster at the end is because we had fresher tyres. The fact that he was faster at the start is because we were behind Russell, but it would almost look like the great balance of performance that we had in qualifying, parity of performance – it almost like transferred into the race, where normally you have some variations as a function of how you interact with the tyres. But actually, today, I think it was very similar, which once again, in a track that is so demanding on tyres, so demanding on aerodynamics – I mean, that’s really good news for the progress that we have made with the performance of the car.”
Here’s Max Verstappen, Christian Horner on Lando Norris
Here’s Lando Norris on Lap 1 move
Here’s McLaren on fire scene
Here’s how F1 Spanish GP panned out
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