He still has to study as an adult to take the final step after having created an extremely effective and fast single-seater. McLaren appears in Austria with a determined Norris: “Overall I’m happy, I’m here to race and to win. That’s what I want and all of McLaren.”.
But there is also the history of the last two races to examine. Pole in Spain not converted into victory. An opportunity in Canada not seized on the fly due to strategic choices. Here, against an opponent like the Verstappen-Red Bull duo, hesitations are not allowed.
The potential for victory and the reality
“They were races in which we scored a lot of points, showing extremely good performances, but when you compete you do it only to win. You know what was possible to achieve and what not, I always think about the higher opportunity we had, potentially to win races. However, this is a potential, to realize it everything must be done to perfection when you race against one of the best drivers ever in F1. If everything doesn’t go perfectly, like last weekend, you pay the price.“explains Lando.
Departure, strategies, continuous developments. The game for McLaren has now moved to a further level, on the comparison with Red Bull to win races and fight for the championship.
Missed opportunity but many positive aspects
Norris concede come “Yes, there was potentially a lost victory, last weekend.
Sometimes it happens, there have been races lost by drivers who even made a small mistake in the fastest car.
But, we must also think about the positive aspects of these races, how many things were done wellhow many at the necessary level, and they were 99.9%”.
Nuances, then. “It happens that, when you are in this situation, small details that were not on the priority list even a year ago, now become the first ones.
Let’s look at my departure, which wasn’t bad, it wasn’t as good as it needed to be. You can read it as a mistake on our part but it wasn’t a big one, it was an acceptable start, but with 600 meters before turn 1 it cost me more than it would have done on 95% of the other circuits we race on.
Those are the things to work on, the team needs to do better, I’m not at the level I want to be at. However, they are at a good level, the team is very strong. We are fighting against a multiple world champion driver and team, we will have to be the best and we must recover, do it quickly: the team is doing its best, so am I.”.
