01/08/2023
NEWS STORY
Describing his Spa pace as "painful" and "terrible", Lando Norris admits to being amazed that he was able to finish seventh.
Seventh at the end of the opening lap, following the elimination of his teammate, the Briton was among the first to pit, his team switching him to the hard compound.
Ahead of the race, due to the weather conditions, the white-banded rubber hadn't been seen all weekend and even the mediums had only been used by one driver (Stroll) before he crashed.
Consequently, the hards and mediums were unknown factors, and this combined with the durability of the softs, is probably why Norris was the only driver to try the white-banded tyres.
The hards, combined with an ongoing downforce issue with the MCL60 - and its predecessors - left Norris struggling, a situation further complicated by McLaren's decision to go for a high downforce set-up over the previous two days, so much so that he fails to understand how he finished in the points.
"It was terrible," he said at race end. "That's an honest answer. We were just stuck in a circle of not being able to push enough in the middle sector because of the cars ahead.
"People behind were having to lift in Eau Rouge, we were that slow," he continued, "I was getting overtaken before the DRS zone even started. I was barely making eighth gear.
"I was that slow on the straights, I just couldn't defend, and I couldn't attack. It was impossible to overtake. I didn't overtake one person on the straights, I was too slow.
"Honestly, I had a run on Alex out of Turn 1, I had new tyres, he had old tyres, and I think by the end of the straight he pulled three or four car lengths from me.
"I only overtook two or three people today and that was all in the corners," he sighed. "It was painful. So we had to try something. We went on to the hards, and that was even worse. No one's ever used the hard all weekend.
"We thought it normally kind of suits us, so I think it was the right decision to try, but it was still terrible. I didn't have enough laps to get the tyres in and be able to push."
At the time of his second stop he was running 15th.
"We had one thing left to try," he said, "and that was to put a soft tyre on, and this was on lap 24, lap 25. We put the soft on and everything came back towards us."
Nonetheless, he didn't think the red-banded rubber would last until the end of the race.
"I was expecting to box again for another set of softs at some point," he admitted. "We undercut like ten cars I think, which I was pretty surprised by. A good surprise of course, but I thought I'd be boxing again.
"The team were like, 'we're going to try and go to the end'," he continued. "I'd pushed the tyres so much in the beginning I thought my race was going to be pretty much over and I was going to start to struggle too much.
"But we kept the tyres alive and stayed in P7, stayed ahead of Esteban who was closing quite quickly. I don't know how I ended up P7. I felt like I was last for the most part. A little bit surprised, honestly."
Reflecting on the weekend overall, he said: We got it wrong, we've admitted it already. We were way too high on downforce and it didn't help us out in any way.
"We just need to rethink how we approach the weekend. The wing level and stuff like this might work on some circuits but it doesn't work on all of them, and we clearly got it wrong here.
"It's how we treat the tyres with suspension," he added. "Everything like that is not where we want it to be. It's about the balance, not just about adding load to the car."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spa here.