F1 | Norris frustrated: “With one or two more laps I would have caught Max”

The result is always the same, because Max Verstappen and Red Bull won at Imola, but in the last year and a half the Dutch driver has probably never struggled as much as today, appearing under the checkered flag with a margin of less than a second against Lando Norris’s McLaren (the smallest gap since Jeddah 2022), which therefore also confirmed on the banks of the Santerno that the victory in Miami was anything but random.

The Woking team had seen pole position slip away due to the gift that Nico Hulkenberg gave to Verstappen yesterday, giving him a fundamental lead in T1, but there was the impression that they could try to annoy the three-time world champion. In fact, Norris immediately followed the RB20 at the start, but slowly saw it move further and further away during the first stint, in which both were on medium compound tyres.

The move to the hard, however, completely reversed the values ​​and in the last 15 laps it seemed quite clear that Lando had the potential to try to catch Max. In the space of a few laps he went from over six seconds to just over one , without ever having the opportunity to exploit the DRS. However, the feeling is that perhaps even just one more lap would have been enough to allow him to at least try an attack.

A feeling that Norris himself confirmed as soon as he got off his MCL38, without hiding even a hint of frustration, when he arrived at Vicky Piria’s microphone for the ritual interviews before climbing onto the podium.

“It hurts me to say it, but with one or two more laps I think I would have caught him. It’s hard, it’s a shame, because I gave my all until the last lap, but I lost too much time at the start. He it was much better in the first stint, while in the second we were obviously stronger. The first half of the race was difficult and the second much better: with a couple more laps it would have been great, but today wasn’t our day.” Norris said.

At this point it is undeniable that McLaren has made a clear step forward with the latest technical package introduced in Florida, which was a real injection of confidence. Lando, in fact, did not hide when he was asked if he now feels ready to compete with Verstappen and Red Bull every Sunday.

“We thought it was possible over the course of the weekend and now we are at the point where we can say that we are in a position to be able to fight with Red Bull and Ferrari. We are doing a great job and now we have to continue like this, focusing on the same things, only now we are fighting for first and second place. It’s always a surprise to say that it’s frustrating not to win, but with the latest improvements and with the two weekends we’ve had, that’s what we have to start expecting from ourselves”, he concluded.