Lando Norris, McLaren, Circuit of the Americas, 2019

Norris ‘missed sixth place by one corner’

2019 F1 season

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Lando Norris says he was only one corner away from beating Daniel Ricciardo to sixth place after crossing the line less than four-tenths of a second behind the Renault driver.

The McLaren driver also admitted he nearly collided with his rival at the start of the United States Grand Prix.

“He got ahead of me on the first lap into turn two,” siad Norris. “I almost didn’t see him, I almost had a huge shunt. It was a bit of surprise seeing him come up the inside, he must’ve been in my blind spot around turn two.

“I got him back, I was in fifth place. But their pace was better than us today.”

The two McLaren drivers out-qualified the Renault pair but Ricciardo got ahead of them both in the race.

“Obviously like we proved yesterday we were the quicker team and we had a quicker car,” said Norris. “But on race pace we were expecting them to be definitely stronger than us, especially with the wind conditions and so on today. So I wasn’t shocked that he was able to get past me. I was kind of expecting it at one point.

“The fact that we tried the alternate strategy, we tried the two-stop and missed out by one corner, under a second, that was a bit more frustrating. But apart from that I was happy.”

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2019 F1 season

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6 comments on “Norris ‘missed sixth place by one corner’”

  1. I think Hamilton and Verstappen (or was that when Bottas was still to get past?) coming up also stopped him before, as he was about 22 thousands of a second behind Ricciardo just before. Still, a very good weekend from him with no mistakes I could see (though he might still have to work on getting his best effort in Q3, rather than Q2?).

  2. He’s had a great rookie season and is rookie of the year for me. Sure there is improvements to come but he’s been unlucky in 3 or 4 races this year and likely missing 20 points from his total as a result. I think he has Sainz on raw pace and just needs to up his race pace and tyre management next year.

  3. Ricciardo had almost 10 seconds gap before the last 3-4 laps.
    He’s a funny guy. Maybe he was trolling?
    Or more likely he had to slow down because of being warned of some bad looking telemetry data?
    Or he just used the gap to go on the safe side with his worn tyres?

    It was a bit interesting from Mercedes to do 2stops with Bottas at his comfortable lead.
    His hards would have lapped something like 35 laps, just like Ricciardo’s set.
    Seems viable with Mercedes’ pack.
    Ricciardo done a first stint on softs for something like 25 laps, what is way more brave than doing
    35 as second stint on hards.
    Probably they just wanted to give the race to Lewis, as he likely won the championship anyway.

    I like and respect Lewis for a long while, and I don’t mind if he gets as many or more titles than Schumacher,
    even if MSC is my childhood hero. Hamilton just deserves it, his raw talent and professionalism packed together
    just more and better than others after the post Schumacher era. Probably noone predicted this much, but I think I have
    considered him, Alonso, and Kimi as the next years’ possible dominators before Vettel and RB emerged.

    Although I won’t mind if next season would be skipped, because I wanna see the new aero rules in effect so much.
    As lobby of money won’t ever allow F1 to go back to manufactory and a much more hand made level this is one of the best possible decisions. Even if I’m atleast partially cheering for Ferrari, they should not have a veto. Indy is very good, and definitely comparable despite of the lower speeds on road courses, and simpler aero, and lower costs.

  4. Anyway, nice strat by McLaren, I liked that they gave a good chance for both of their drivers to fight Ricciardo as possible at the endgame. The race was not too action packed, but was quite amazing in these small strategic efforts, like the short medium compound stint for Norris, as Sainz was not able to take on after a while, and Ricciardo’s soft-hard strategy.
    I expected after that long soft run, that he is maybe able to do the rest on a medium, but usually midfield teams are on a shortage of new compounds for the race.
    If F1 wants to have some interesting graphics, it would be good to show the available compounds at current time, and their mileage, or laps completed. Although it would not be easy to visualize at all. Ofc it’d require a way better solution than the one they just tried about the current set’s quite naive wear data.

  5. In races like this you can really see why Ricciardo is still one of the best drivers out there. Hülkenberg is no slouch but Ricciardo is able to extract more from this car. Both he and Norris were two of the stars of this race.

  6. Norris was like 10 seconds behind Ricciardo with 3 laps to go… Didn’t see anything of him on the live broadcast, but he must have put in some qualifying laps on those new softs to make it only 0.3 sec behind Danyy Ric at the flag. If his last pitstop would have been flawless, he would’ve snatched 6th place from the aussie. Anyway, I like both of them so it’s all good.

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