Lando Norris admitted that he settled for second place in Formula 1‘s Spanish Grand Prix, acknowledging that team-mate Oscar Piastri “drove a very good race”, but also conveyed his confidence that he can win the World Championship.
Norris went into the previous weekend’s round buoyed by a much-needed victory in Monaco, which put him three points behind his team-mate in the title race.
However, the Briton had no answer for his Australian counterpart’s pace at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, as Piastri cruised to victory from pole position.
Norris’ cause wasn’t helped by losing out to Piastri in qualifying, and subsequently losing second place to Max Verstappen into Turn 1 at the beginning of the race.
The poor start placed Norris on the backfoot, but after the race he admitted that he was content with his result, admitting Piastri had been too strong all weekend.
“I just remember the lights going up pretty quickly, and obviously I was a little bit caught out by that,” Norris told media including Motorsport Week.
“So, yeah. And then I just couldn’t get a slipstream. Yeah, I just… Oscar didn’t give me a slipstream down to Turn 1!
“And then, you know, it was hard to commit into the braking of [Turn] 1 and Max got past. So it was a long race.
“I think we knew our pace was going to be strong, so I didn’t need to do anything too risky into Turn 1.
“But, yeah, I don’t think I lost out in the race. I think Oscar drove a very good race today and had a good day yesterday.
“And, yeah, I had the pace to go with him, but not enough to try and catch up and put him under threat.”
‘I lost out to the better guy’ – Norris admits Piastri was too strong
Norris further admitted that Piastri had outpaced him fair and square across the qualifying and the race, but did not show unhappiness at the result, saying he knows the areas in which he needs to sharpen up his game in order to maintain a title challenge
“It’s been a good weekend. I lost out to the better guy this weekend,” he said.
“He performed yesterday and that gave him the advantage today, so nothing more than that. I know where I need to improve, I know what I need to do better.
“I feel confident that I can do it but, yeah, can’t win them all, as much as I want to. It takes time to progress and that’s what I’m working on.”
Norris admitted the race had been made more interesting by Red Bull’s ambitious three-stop strategy which kept Max Verstappen somewhat in touch with the McLarens in the race.
“I would say a reasonably straightforward race, a bit more interesting with Max doing the three-stop – his pace was pretty strong, to be honest,”
“And that was it, I tried to catch up to Oscar at certain points, but as soon as I get within four seconds the dirty air just starts to hurt too much, so then you kind of get hotter tyres, you start to lose downforce, you push a bit more, you slide more and it’s just a bit of a horrible spiral.
“So nothing much, I think the pace was strong, just the dirty air is too much.”
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