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While Max Verstappen claimed his 17th race win of the season in Brazil, Lando Norris had a good outing as well, finishing P2 behind the Red Bull in both the Sprint as well as the main race. As per a report by F1Maximaal, Norris explained the strategy that he used to try and catch up with Verstappen during the Sao Paulo GP.
Even though Norris was starting from P7, the young Briton got a brilliant start off the line and catapulted himself into P2 within the first corner. From there, he managed to pull away from the rest of the grid but failed to catch up with Verstappen, who was in a different league of his own.
Norris explained that he could keep up with Verstappen for the first fifteen or so laps, but always fell short during the end of the stints. He said, “I don’t know if that’s because we’re a bit slower and I’m pushing harder to keep up, or if we’re just a bit weaker in terms of tire management”
The 23-year-old also spoke about how McLaren was especially weak in turns 10 and 12. That is where Red Bull managed to pull away from the MCL35 of Norris. The only place where Norris could have tried to attack Verstappen was on the run-up to turn 4.
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Norris revealed that he did try to attack Verstappen once and it was during the restart. However, Verstappen had enough grip on his tires to get good traction out of turn 3, and by the time Norris had pulled up behind him, it was already the braking zone of turn 4 and the move couldn’t be completed.
Despite the failure to overtake the Dutchman, Norris is extremely delighted at the progress that his team has made over the whole season. He explained that since McLaren introduced their upgrades in Austria, Norris has been the second-highest scorer, with only Verstappen having scored more points.
Norris said, “If you see where we were in Bahrain, and that we are now talking about the fight with Red Bull, that is a good sign.” McLaren had an extremely poor start to the 2023 season, with four P17 finishes in the first seven race weekends for Norris.
From there, the car has improved so much that Norris now has four P2 finishes in the last six race weekends. The Briton is optimistic that he will be able to fight Verstappen for race wins in 2024.
