Lando Norris admits his fourth place in the Austrian Grand Prix was a surprise because his updated McLaren was quick enough to beat both Aston Martins.
McLaren brought the biggest part of a three-race upgrade period to the Red Bull Ring, with only Norris receiving it due to the manufacturing deadlines. He duly qualified in the top four and then overtook Lewis Hamilton before holding off Fernando Alonso’s late charge to finish best of the rest behind the Red Bull and Ferrari drivers, being promoted to fourth by a post-race penalty for Carlos Sainz.
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“I think being quick on this track helps, the quicker you are here the better it is on tires in a way because we’re very quick in the high-speed corners and that’s where you do a lot of the degradation here,” Norris said. “I was a bit nervous coming into the race really, honestly, that the race pace was going to let us down a lot but actually it was better than I was expecting, which is a good surprise.
“Still, I say not great, like Fernando was clearly quicker at the end by quite a chunk every lap and I was like almost crashing in every corner, but P5 shows we’ve taken a good step forward so I’m happy with that.
“Maybe not (surprised to beat) Mercedes, they didn’t look good all weekend, so to Mercedes no. Which is a nice thing to say. Did I expect to be quicker than Astons? I’d probably say no. they’ve also not looked super quick on one lap all weekend but usually their race pace is strong and it was, but we were just quick enough and could build up enough of a gap early in the stint that he didn’t catch up at the end to get past me. Pros and cons.”
Despite the strong result and Driver of the Day recognition after fights with Sainz too, Norris says the fact he was struggling with his car’s handling late on shows there are inherent issues that need fixing.
“You just go to the limit of what the car can do on the next level. The car just goes quicker around every corner but the way you have to drive it is exactly the same, which I guess is our next issue to tackle, things we’ve been complaining about all year are the same, we just are at a higher level.
“So I feel like I can be more confident if we can really tackle these issues, I feel like they’re really letting us down a lot at the moment, it’s not just about downforce, it’s handling and how you drive the car, not just put a load more downforce on and then try and send it. There are more technical things we need to try and tackle and understand, when we do that I’m definitely confident we can fight the quicker cars ahead of us.”