09/07/2022
NEWS STORY
A brake-issue left Lando Norris "scared to hit the brakes" as youngster faces a difficult weekend.
While teammate Daniel Ricciardo's issues continue, the Australian lacking confidence in his car, Norris had a somewhat similar problem, a lack of confidence in his brakes.
Running wide at numerous corners, at one point the Briton told his team he was "scared to hit the brakes".
"We just had some issues," he subsequently explained in as masterpiece of understatement. "We were lucky to get away with them in Q1 on a couple of laps.
"Just a lot of problems," he continued, "since the beginning of the day in FP1, just on the back foot, the braking, a lot of problems with some of the things on the car that doesn't allow us to do a lap.
"The car had some decent pace, we should've been in Q3," he insisted. "I had the confidence in the car when things were working to be in Q3, but just the engine issue this morning, meant we lost a lot of laps. I had no low-fuel laps, so Q1 was my first feeling of low fuel, high grip. So just on the back foot compared to other teams, let's say.
"Now even more issues in qualifying," he added, "in the middle of the braking zone the car just goes straight on. It's pretty scary but hopefully we can fix it."
Lining up in 15th for the Sprint, he said: "I definitely think we're out of place. But it's close at the same time, I don't think we have any strengths at the minute.
"It's going to be hard to make up for where we are. But it's a sprint race, a long race on Sunday. Many things can happen, I want to be optimistic but it's going to be a difficult weekend."
"It's not something we're massively missing in high-speed or anything," said Ricciardo, who qualified 16th, of his problems, "it's kind of just accumulative, a little bit everywhere.
"I don't even know if it's necessarily confidence," he added. "I'm not getting into a corner like ‘I'm scared, what do I do?', it's more just probably the feel and just the ability to really push it up to that edge.
"And obviously there's times you overshoot it, but just getting it and balancing it right on the edge of that, it's a little bit of an uncertainty."