Lando Norris says he needs to try and make the most of his opportunity to cut Max Verstappen’s championship lead even further at the Italian Grand Prix, after qualifying on pole position.
Verstappen entered the race weekend at Monza with a 70-point advantage over Norris, following the McLaren driver’s dominant victory at Zandvoort a week ago. Qualifying saw Norris secure a second consecutive pole position ahead of teammate Oscar Piastri, while Verstappen is only seventh on the grid and behind both Ferrari and Mercedes drivers.
“It’s a good opportunity,” Norris said. “I expect [Verstappen] to cut through and be behind us quite quickly. Their race pace looked very strong on Friday; they were on the better side of the graining and the degradation. I expect them to be a bit more hopeful tomorrow.
“For some reason they didn’t seem to take those steps forward through qualifying. [Verstappen] still seemed quick, even in Q2 he was right there and ended up quicker than me even on a used tire. Even his gap to Perez wasn’t as big as what it normally is, so I don’t know if he struggled more with something or didn’t put good enough laps in. It’ll be for a reason, I’m sure, and we need to try and make the most of that.”
With Norris expecting McLaren to talk about team orders on Sunday morning as part of its strategy meeting, he is also not as confident that he and Piastri will have as big an advantage over the rest of the field as he had a week ago.
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“Honestly, I think when you look back to Zandvoort, you could say yes, there was enough evidence that led us to believe we could have a very, very strong race,” he said. “Here, less so, just because it’s been so close, but we’re still first and second, which means we have a good car and that normally translates well into a good race car.
“I think tomorrow there’s more question marks with more graining and degradation and things like that. Everyone is 4-1-2 (soft-medium-hard sets) with tires, and probably a little bit more nervous of what could happen or what might happen. We’re in the best position for it, so excited to see what we can do.”
Norris also admitted he didn’t expect his final lap of qualifying to be good enough for pole position, after making a mistake at the first chicane that cost him lap time.
“It just didn’t feel like a nailed lap,” he said. “I think all of us as drivers, when you go out in qualifying, you just want to put together the perfect lap, you want everything to flow. I tried pushing the braking a bit more for [Turn] 1, and I actually got [it] so much better; I then smashed the inside curb of [Turn] 2 because I turned in too early.
“So I was about 0.15s down just after Turn 1, so I was kind of like ‘Eek, it’s over already before it even starts.’ I didn’t expect to gain it, but then I nailed the second chicane and gained 0.15s back straightaway. Then just made a couple of hundredths of a gain in every corner from that point on.
“It just didn’t feel like a nailed lap, didn’t feel as good as my lap last weekend, but clearly still good enough for pole, which is a nice feeling.”