Lando Norris, McLaren, Silverstone, 2021

No more I can do to help Ricciardo, says Norris

2021 Hungarian Grand Prix

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Lando Norris says he can’t do anything more than he is to help team mate Daniel Ricciardo master the McLaren.

Norris has been consistently ahead of his team mate this season. He leads his team mate by 113 points to 50 in the championship, and Ricciardo failed to make the cut for Q3 for the sixth time yesterday.

Norris said he has done everything he can to help Ricciardo adapt to the handling characteristics of McLaren’s car.

“I don’t know where else I can help, you know?” said Norris after qualifying yesterday. “I tell him what I’m feeling, he has all my data, he can see everything I’m doing, I describe things very well, I think, in the debriefs, in what I’m doing, so.

“I’m not going to lie, but it’s not up to me at the end of the day.”

McLaren are fighting for third in the constructors’ championship with Ferrari, with a narrow, 15-point lead ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix. Ricciardo lies behind both Ferrari drivers in the championship.

“Obviously I want him to do well because we need that for the championship,” said Norris. “And [if] we want to beat Ferrari, then he needs to do well.

“But there’s only so much I can do to help him. He’s still a different driver, in the end of the day and I drive differently. Every driver drives differently to everyone else in the world, and what he feels is different to me and what I feel is different to him.”

Norris will start today’s race from sixth, ahead of both Ferraris. He says McLaren has a good chance to out-score its main championship rival.

“Coming into it, I think we were expecting them to be very fast because they’ve improved their very high speed characteristics, like in Austria. And also they have a very stable rear in the slow speed and that’s what we’ve been struggling with all weekend, is this rear end in these last three corners in the last sector, a few corners in the middle sector.

“We were expecting more from them so I’m pretty happy to be ahead of one, obviously one of them made a mistake and was out quite early on, so a good chance for us to score some good points ahead of them tomorrow.”

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2021 Hungarian Grand Prix

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5 comments on “No more I can do to help Ricciardo, says Norris”

  1. When Ricciardo signed for McLaren I thought it was a bad choice and still do. At Renault/Alpine he was king of the castle, car built for him and had Ocon under control. But at McLaren, not once has he looked like he has anywhere near the pace of Norris, he’s slow in qualifying and if McLaren are looking for a leader they’re not looking at him anymore. I can’t imagine you just forget how to drive so surely he’s going through something in that McLaren but it’s ruining his stock and wounding McLaren heavily in their fight with Ferrari.

    1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      1st August 2021, 12:25

      @rocketpanda it was a case of overconfidence. Everytime a driver changes teams there is a huge chance they may not be able to perform at the same level.

      There are few factors at work:

      1. New equipment
      2. New people/new teammate
      3. Mental fortitude

      Some people excel at all teams with all equipment. Alonso is an example of that, although one may argue the teams used to suffer when he was there in his youth. Raikonnen is another with the exception of a few years at Ferrari.

      I think Hulk is also excellent in that regard although he suffered from the mental side a bit more than others, understandably so.

      However if the car doesn’t suit the driver, it’s going to be very hard for the driver to produce the results they want as we’ve seen with Gasly, Albon, Perez, Vettel, and Ricciardo recently.

      1. @freelittlebirds at risk of getting an NDA-sniper laser on me, the teams did not stop suffering as Alonso aged.

        1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
          1st August 2021, 22:31

          @hazelsouthwell well, Alonso proved us wrong today :-) Maybe he read this and that was his reply.

  2. Outcome is final.

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