Lando Norris (McLaren): “That makes life incredibly difficult for me”

7th place at Spa for McLaren driver Lando Norris! After the race, the 2025 world champion said: “I thought the pace was incredible today. To be honest, I think the pace was good enough to be on the podium today.” But it wasn’t to be. No Papaya on the Spa podium: Lando Norris finished only seventh, whilst his team-mate Oscar Piastri managed fifth.

New engine cost him places

Lando Norris started the Belgian Grand Prix at a significant disadvantage: although he’d secured third on the grid in Saturday’s qualifying, because McLaren had fitted him with a new engine, he lost ten grid positions for the race and started from 13th place. It was Norris’s fourth engine in the pool, exceeding the allocated quota. As Norris had suffered engine failure in China, a replacement beyond the permitted quota was already necessary. Spa is a popular circuit for engine changes. Teams usually have to accept such penalties sooner or later. At Spa, a fresh engine delivers extra performance because engine power plays a major role – and at the same time, overtaking is easier on the 7.004-kilometre circuit than on many other race tracks.

Bad luck for Lando Norris

Norris on his race: “Everything was made more difficult, of course, by the fact that I only started from 13th place. The VSC phases also came at the wrong time for us. They really benefited the drivers on the hard tyres, but for me they came a bit too early. We’ll analyse that again and check whether we could have pitted during the VSC phase. I reckon I lost 10 seconds because of that. And I lost another 5 or 6 or so during the pit stop. So that’s 16 seconds that were simply added to my race time.” There were some procedural issues during his stop, which caused a delay.

Norris: “That makes life incredibly difficult for me. And on top of that, I started from 13th on the grid. I don’t think we could have made our race any more difficult today.” And finally, the Briton added: “I think the pace was good enough for a podium finish or even for the win.” That honour, however, went to Kimi Antonelli from the Mercedes works team.

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