Norris reveals why McLaren struggled for pace in Azerbaijan
Having been unable to capitalize on his team-mate Oscar Piastri's retirement, Lando Norris has shared his thoughts about why he struggled to make progress during the Baku race.
Championship leader Oscar Piasti suffered a disastrous opening lap, jumping the lights and then activating anti-stall from P9 before crashing out at Turn 5 having dropped to the back of the field.
Lando Norris finished seventh – the same position the McLaren driver started having struggled to make any progress through the sole pit stop sequence. His team-mate’s retirement had opened the door for Norris to eat into Piastri’s lead in the drivers’ standings, but he only managed to reduce the gap by six points.
Commenting on his tough afternoon at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Norris said: "A tricky race and a tricky weekend overall. Today the pace was okay, but not enough to overtake. After not doing a good enough job yesterday, and a lack of real strategy options today, there wasn't much more we could have done.
"Frustrating and not how I wanted the weekend to go, but we'll get our heads down now and look ahead to Singapore," added the McLaren driver.
Pressed on to reveal why he was unable to storm through the field which McLaren had been able to do earlier during the season, Norris suggested that Red Bull achieved a breakthrough with its car thanks to the upgrades it introduced in Monza two weeks ago.
“I think people have caught [us]. Red Bull brought upgrades [at Monza], so they’re clearly doing well, their race pace is strong, but they’ve still won plenty of races this year.
“It’s not a surprise. They’ve improved in some areas, they’re a winning team for the last however many years. We knew that they could be a threat, we know that some of these tracks are not going to be our best, but it also wasn’t our cleanest weekend.
“If I could go back to yesterday and change some things I certainly would, but we’re doing the best we can every weekend. It’s hard to be perfect in the world of F1. I’m trying to work on things," he told Sky Sports F1.
