Lando Norris believes Ferrari’s pace at the Mexico City Grand Prix will make challenging Carlos Sainz for victory difficult for McLaren.
Sainz took pole position by nearly a quarter of a second from Max Verstappen, with Norris over three-tenths off Sainz in third place. With Ferrari having comfortably finished one-two in the last race in Austin, Norris is expecting another tough race against the Scuderia but insists he’s satisfied with his top three starting position despite showing strong pace earlier in the day.
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“Honestly I’m relatively happy-ish, still to be P3,” Norris said. “Not a great day [on Friday], I mean I missed obviously FP1 and the alternate tires. I felt like a bit on the back foot, but probably not as much as what Max was. But I’ve not been that comfortable at all.
“Found some good steps into qualifying, and obviously Q1 and Q2 were very good, but I found the limit very quickly. I was happy to find the limit and things were good, but just couldn’t progress from there.
“The car was too difficult to drive in Q3, too difficult to get especially three-tenths out of it compared to Carlos. So happy with third. For a minute, it looked like it could have been better. I think we finished where we should be.
“I was at the limit, I couldn’t go any quicker. It’s more that the others just didn’t get the most out of it. Pretty much every corner, I was close to locking up and making mistakes. I did that in my Q3 run one lap, but I had definitely nowhere close to three-tenths left in the car.
“So it was more that they just went quicker. I was at the limit, I got everything out of the car already in Q1 and Q2. Made us look like the ones to beat, but honestly since FP1, Ferrari have been the guys to beat, and Carlos is on top. Challenging to beat them.”
Norris felt he couldn’t match Sainz’s lap time even with a perfect qualifying effort, but admits there are question marks over long run pace given how performance can fluctuate between the top teams.
“I mean the race pace is always a tough one to know. The last few weekends, they’ve been extremely quick and quicker than us. So, I don’t have the confidence to say ‘Yes, we can just beat them on pace’, like [in qualifying], not on their level, but [today] is another day.
“If we can have a good start, hopefully it’s exciting down to Turn 1. But Carlos is going to be fast, like he said, he’s got nothing to lose, and they’ve been fastest for the last few weekends. We’ll try our best, but I don’t think we have the pace compared to them at the minute.”