Formula 1 World Champion Lando Norris: “The performance is pretty poor”

Lando Norris is one of the local heroes at the Silverstone Circuit; the McLaren star even has his own grandstand at the historic British circuit, which has been well filled since the start of the weekend. However, fans of the Formula 1 world champion had to hold their breath during the Grand Prix qualifying session to see if their favourite driver would progress. In Q2, he could not manage better than ninth place, having already finished Q1 in eleventh.

In the end, the 26-year-old finished sixth, more than seven-tenths of a second off Kimi Antonelli’s pole time. The fact that he was the faster of the two McLaren drivers was little consolation, as became clear after the qualifying session. Norris said of his performance: “The performance is pretty poor given the gaps to the lads ahead of me.”

“I thought my final fast lap was pretty strong, and it was by far the best time I managed – it was five tenths faster than my previous attempts. So I can count myself lucky that I’m not 1.3 seconds off the top. It was a good lap too; I think I got everything out of it that was possible,” said the eleven-time Grand Prix winner.

“We’re just slow everywhere. I think we’ve managed to improve the car in some areas, but we need to understand why we’re so slow on the straights. And we were also slow through every corner. The car just isn’t that efficient. We’re lacking downforce and the drag is too high as well,” lamented the champion. “We’re not quick either on the high-speed sections or the slower ones. That simply shows who has a good car – and that doesn’t apply to us.”

When asked what he could achieve with his car in the race, he replied: “That’s a good question; I’ve no idea. I’ll try to get off to a good start; that helped in the sprint too. I don’t know how else I could have finished third with a gap of seven-tenths of a second per lap. It’s mad. We’ll see what’s possible; realistically, fifth place is probably the best we can hope for. I’ll try to beat the Red Bull Racing lads – they’re our main rivals. The Ferrari and Mercedes drivers are significantly faster; that’s just a shame.”

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