28/05/2022
NEWS STORY
Having suffered from tonsillitis over the Barcelona weekend, Lando Norris admits that he is still not fully recovered, estimating that he's operating at 90%.
Despite being unwell for much of the Barcelona weekend the youngster battled his way to 8th, and in a bid to have him fully fit for this weekend McLaren cancelled all his post-race media and promotional commitments and ordered him to rest.
Still not feeling fully fit, Norris was given permission to skip Friday's FIA press conference as he prepared for the gruelling test of mental and physical strength that is Monaco.
Finishing fifth in both sessions, Norris admitted that he was still not fully fit.
"I'm not 100 per cent still," he told reporters, "but I can't describe how much better I am than this time last week. So it's good, 90 per cent gone I'd say.
"I'm just still struggling a bit with my throat and coughs and stuff like that," he admitted. "But the main part of my fever and everything is gone so I'm in a much better condition.
"I can enjoy it a bit more and actually concentrate when I'm driving and so on. It's been a decent first day here, so I'm reasonably happy."
Indeed, in both sessions the youngster was essentially 'best of the rest', with only the Red Bulls and Ferraris outpacing him.
"I'm a little bit surprised to see we're ahead of Mercedes, I expected them to maybe be ahead of us at the minute," he admitted. "The plan is to be ahead of them and if we can be, then I'll be very happy with that.
"I think the initial feeling in the car was good in terms of it giving me some good confidence," he continued. "It was a car that I felt like I could push on and find the limit quite quickly, which is a very important thing here.
"We worked our way through our programme, and took it step-by-step, trying to find some small improvements here and there, wherever we could, which was good learning.
"We need to look at it overnight and put what we learnt into the usual plan for tomorrow but I'm happy with today."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Monaco, here.