Lando Norris has revealed the impact of losing valuable track time after a gearbox change, despite qualifying on pole position at the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix.
Norris and McLaren’s weekend did not get off to the best of starts on Friday, languishing a full second off the pace on Friday in FP1 as the MCL40 struggled around the Madring.
Disaster then struck in FP2, after the reigning champion experienced a downshifts issue that led to a gearbox change, Norris missing almost the entire session.
Entering Saturday on the backfoot, he pulled out a barnstorming lap in the dying seconds of Q3 to secure pole position by just
Answering a question from Motorsport Monday on the impact of missing FP2, Norris detailed where he had to play catchup ahead of qualifying.
It’s always hard to know exactly what, I mean, you just lose laps and it’s not like you get a lot of laps in general, especially in lower fuel qualifying style runs” he said.
So obviously I lost them, I also lost that little indication of what the degradation will be like tomorrow, like they both [Kimi Antonelli and MaxVerstappen] alluded to, this chance of high degradation, so that’s when you want certainly a little bit of a feeling of how it degrades, what corners to really save, all of those little things.
“You want those feelings from the car and at the minute I don’t have any of them, so that’s something I’ve kind of got to find out on the go tomorrow and adapt to.”
Setup uncertainty for Lando Norris at the Madring
Norris then detailed the gamble he and McLaren were forced to play with setup, given they had just one session to validate their choice for FP2 prior to the gearbox change.
“And also just in terms of, you know, you lose a little bit in terms of setup, like you don’t really know what direction to go.”
“We went in a direction for FP2, didn’t really end up knowing if it was better or worse or do we need to do more of what we want to do, so it just left a lot of question marks for today to then try and figure out and you just lose the ability to test as much stuff as you would want to from a car point of view.
“And also from a driver point of view, especially around a new track, just little subtleties of where the bumps are and when you put on a new set of tyres, where can you really get on throttle a bit more aggressively, how do you have to take the curves in the chicane, so it’s just timing, timing of things you lose as a driver and then yeah, it’s easy to put too much pressure on yourself in FP3 to try and like re-catch up and take too many risks in some way and overdrive.
” So it’s hard to quantify a number in any sort, but you just lose experience around, especially on a new track, it can hurt a lot, but I seem to do a pretty good job on the other side.”
Norris cut a relaxed figure in the post-qualifying press conference, both pleased with his lap and the knowledge that he has pole on a track that overtaking has proved somewhat challenging. His start on Sunday will prove intriguing.
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