Lando Norris says McLaren hit the ceiling of their car’s potential quickly at the Qatar Grand Prix.
He took pole position for the sprint race and would have won it had he not chosen to hand victory to his team mate. However Norris was relegated to third on the grid for the grand prix by Max Verstappen and George Russell.Norris said the team did not expect to become more competitive between the two sessions. “I don’t think we were expecting a step [in pace],” he said after qualifying yesterday. “The car was already mint in FP1 and we couldn’t really get anything out of it.
“I think that’s what we’ve done a lot of times this year. We’re very good at just coming to the weekend and the car’s quick from the off. We put it straight away in the sweet spot.
“I think what Red Bull and Max showed is that not every team can do that. And I think that’s a strength from us.”
Verstappen endured a tough start to the weekend and only finished eighth in the sprint race. However he rebounded in qualifying for the grand prix and took pole position, before losing it due to a penalty.
Red Bull said they improved their set-up due to the test work they were able to do on Sergio Perez’s car during the sprint race. Perez qualified 16th, eight places away from the points positions, so the team chose to take his car out of parc ferme and change its set-up, though it meant starting from the pits.
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“They showed how much they struggled yesterday and how much just a few little tweaks to the car, how much that can make a difference to go from where he was yesterday to where he was today,” said Norris.
“So I think we just got a lot out of it yesterday. I did a good lap and I was happy. Today, same again.
“But when I’m on pole [on Friday] by whatever the gap was to George, five hundredths or something, that’s not like we’re way quicker and he’s slower.
“Today, George was ahead and Max was ahead again. So I don’t think we may be quite at the pace comparing to them, especially today. But hopefully tomorrow we can get something back.”
He suspects the fact he started the sprint race from pole position flattered their pace in the race. “I think the clean air that I had earlier today made us look probably a bit better than we were,” he said.
“I don’t think we’ve necessarily been the quickest, to be honest, this weekend, I think Mercedes have so I’m expecting a tough battle and excited to see what we can do.
“I would like to give the guys ahead a little battle tomorrow and of course go forward. Our target would be to try and win the race but [Verstappen and Russell] are probably going to make my life pretty tough tomorrow.”
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