It was the weekend in which McLaren had to make up points on Max Verstappen in the championship race and, instead, Lando Norris found himself leaving Belgium with an even wider gap than the one he had with when he arrived in Spa.
After Friday, the easiest bet would have been for a McLaren to win, thanks to a pace superior to that of its opponents. However, qualifying reshuffled the grid, putting the two McLarens in fourth and fifth position and Max Verstappen out of the top 10 due to the penalty. An aspect that undoubtedly played a central and important role in today’s race, given also the difficulties in completing overtaking, but at McLaren there is also regret because weighing on the total points earned is an error by Norris himself at the beginning of the race.
The McLaren driver started fourth and was expected to challenge for the stage win, with Oscar Piastri eventually managing to climb back onto the podium, drawing the two Mercedes cars right behind him in the closing laps thanks to a strong pace in clean air. However, Norris was stuck in traffic throughout the race, largely due to a mistake at the first corner that cost him three places.
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
Keeping wide into Turn One and well clear of his teammate, who was on the inside, the Briton ended up on a very wide line, until he went over the kerb which then widened him further, taking away his directionality until he ended up in the gravel escape road, which cost him acceleration. At that point, Norris was passed not only by Piastri himself, but also by two other cars, those of George Russell and Carlos Sainz.
The Englishman from McLaren immediately tried to recover the positions lost, attempting to overtake the Spaniard from Ferrari, the only one to start the race on hard tyres, but he went wide at the braking point of turn five which brought him back behind him. As the laps went by, Norris’ medium became less and less effective, while the harder tyre fitted by Sainz began to make the difference, allowing him to extend the advantage over the Englishman who, in the meantime, had decided together with the team to extend the first stint leaving room for Verstappen to complete an undercut.
In fact, after the first pit stop Norris was back behind his Red Bull rival, and actually stayed there for the entire race until the finish line, despite having the advantage of fitting hard tyres against Verstappen’s mediums towards the end, thus having more flexibility to attempt an attack. However, the difficulties in following in dirty air compromised his chances, with the three-time world champion managing not only to keep Norris behind him, but also to extend his world championship standings. A difficult scenario to predict after Friday, when the two MCL38s seemed to be fighting for a nice one-two.
“I think there was very little overtaking on the track. Most of it was just in the pit stops. There were a few overtaking moves, but only when you had a 10-lap advantage on the tyres. Otherwise, yeah, it was a bit of a difficult race for overtaking. I felt like we were quick, the car was quick. I don’t feel like we exploited the potential,” Norris said. “Staying in dirty air took a lot away from us, because when I went out in clear air, the car seemed to have good potential. We tried to do the undercut on Carlos and that worked.”
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15, Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
After a pretty significant run of races where there is a sense of having missed an opportunity, Norris believes the summer break comes at the right time to reset the mind, in order to try to realise more of the potential of a competitive McLaren: “We all needed it, but I think I just need a reset.”
“I’ve lost a lot of points in the last three or four races because of stupid things, like mistakes and bad starts. Here I made a mistake in Turn 1. I don’t know why. It’s all silly stuff. It’s not even hard stuff. It’s just… Turn 1, trying to stay out of trouble, trying to make sure there’s a gap and not get hit, and then I just ran myself off the track,” explained Norris, who stressed that he tried to give himself a safety margin to avoid contact that could have compromised his race but, in fact, had the opposite effect.
“Just silly things. The pace is good, the team is doing a great job, so I’m happy. In a way, I feel like I don’t want to take a break, I just want to continue because we’re in good shape. Even today I feel like the pace was very good, maybe I could have been a little bit more aggressive. In the last two or three races I haven’t started from the grid as well as I should have and I’ve lost a lot of points, so hopefully I can come back stronger.”
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