Lando Norris insists he will “go for it” and fight Max Verstappen in the Austrian Grand Prix if the opportunity is there, but remains “realistic” about McLaren’s race chances.
Norris earned his maiden career front row start in Saturday’s qualifying session at the Red Bull Ring, missing out on pole position to Verstappen by just 0.048s.
The result continues the young Briton’s excellent start to the season, as he looks to extend his run of points finishes and claim an eighth top-five finish this year.
In last weekend’s Styrian Grand Prix, Norris claimed fifth place behind both Mercedes and Red Bull drivers, which proved the maximum result after not having the pace to stay with the frontrunners.
Although Norris expects McLaren to struggle to match the pace of the leaders, he is “optimistic” it can fight at the front for a big haul of points.
“We’ll do our best to try and take a step forwards and go in the right direction,” Norris said, as quoted by Motorsport.com.
“But it wasn’t like we were exactly close last weekend and now we have that little bit more of a step, I don’t want to be too negative, I want to be optimistic as I should be.
“But I’m also realistic and know that it’s going to be a very tough race.
“We’re in the best position possible to maximise everything, but if I have a chance to go for P1, a chance to race Max and go for it then I will.
“I’m still doing that, I’m still racing – I still want to do the best I can.
“But I think I also know what’s best for us, what’s best for myself and the team and who we’re, sadly, really racing against in the race tomorrow.”
Reflecting on his lap in qualifying, Norris felt there wasn’t much more time he could have found to beat Verstappen to pole even if he had another lap in hand.
Onboard footage showed Norris was marginally ahead of Verstappen approaching the final corner, but suffered understeer in Turn 10 that saw drop half-a-tenth behind the Dutchman on the run to the line.
“Of course there’s always that little bit, but I’m sure Max would say the same thing,” Norris explained.
“It’s tough because it’s so easy to just run that little bit wide and get your lap deleted and so on.
“And I think I improved already quite a bit in those last two corners compared to the rest of my lap.
“It’s like risk versus reward and how much do you really risk? And I think I took the risk and I ended up where I did.
“But if I think if I had loads more opportunities or if you gave me another opportunity I don’t necessarily think I would improve that much more.
“We are where we are. Throughout this year we know we don’t have a good enough car comparing to Red Bull or Mercedes in general, and maybe today we do, but considering how much quicker they were last weekend I think it’s obvious we struggle in a lot of areas.
“The car is not as quick as them and a lot of things are not possible comparing to them. So, I think I maximised our result and that’s all I could do.”
Comments.
Loading comments…