Spa [Belgium], July 31 : Lando Norris acknowledged that after a "painful" afternoon driving the McLaren MCL60 that was having trouble with straight-line pace, it was a "good surprise" for him to find himself finishing seventh at this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix.
Norris began from position seven on the grid, but due to his early problems, he slid outside the top 10. Before moving on to the softs, which pushed him to the back of the field, switching from the mediums to the hards did not result in any improvement.
He was able to overcome Esteban Ocon's late charge to hold into seventh place, though, by climbing back up the standings.
Norris provided an explanation for why McLaren struggled so much more than their competitors after the race.
“Nothing, I was just barely making eighth gear, we were that slow in the straight. I just couldn’t defend, I couldn’t attack. It was impossible to overtake; I didn’t overtake one person on the straight today. We were too slow," Formula 1 quoted Norris as saying about what had happened with the car.
“I think I only overtook two or three people today and that was all in the corners. It was painful. The beginning was so painful, but we tried and to go on to the hard and we got done over again. The hard was not a good enough tyre," he added.
“So, we had one thing left to try and that was put a soft tyre on. This was already on Lap 24, 25. So I was expecting to box again for another soft at one point. But we were somehow in seventh, we undercut like 10 cars, I think, which I was pretty surprised by. Good surprised of course," Norris said.
Talking about his performance, Norris said," I thought I was going to be boxing again, and they were like, ‘Okay we are going to try and go to the end.’ I pushed the tyres so much in the beginning, I thought my race was going to be over again and I was going to start to struggle too much."
“But we kept the tyres alive and still managed to finish P7, stay ahead of Esteban, who was closing quite quickly in the last couple of laps, so I’m happy," he added.
When Norris gave a specific example of how much he battled in the straights, his other drivers in the pen gave him several sympathetic pats on the back.
“Everyone was overtaking me before the DRS activation zone. Honestly, I had a run on Alex [Albon] out of Turn 1. I was coming at him out of Turn 1, I had new tyres, he had old tyres, and I think by the end of the straight, he pulled, like, three or four car lengths on me," Norris said.
“This was me with DRS, using overtake. It was just painful. I actually could not overtake a car on the straight today, no matter how good my exit was. We got it wrong; I think we've admitted it already. We got it wrong, we were way too high on downforce, and it didn’t help us in pretty much any way, so we’ll review and make sure we do a better job next time," he added.
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