Reigning champion Lando Norris has admitted it’s “pretty obvious” that McLaren has slipped from championship leaders to being the fourth-fastest team in Formula 1 after he finished fifth at the United States Grand Prix.
He finished the race behind Kimi Antonelli, Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at the Circuit of the Americas, with team-mate Oscar Piastri finishing two places behind him in seventh. While this is a disappointing result for a team that less than a year ago was fighting for titles, Norris confirmed that the upgrades are working.
“Yeah, I’m just hoping you put something on and it’s magical and you go a lot quicker and you’re fighting for a podium all of a sudden. Things are all working as they should, but you know, all the teams, Ferrari brought upgrades and all the teams are still bringing upgrades, so they’re delivering. Just not, I guess, just not really in all the places that we need them to, like the slow speed corners, we’re just nowhere near at the level we need to be.
“We need a lot more rear and slow speed. It’s been our issue for a long time now. It seems to be very hard to tackle.”
Asked if that made McLaren the fourth-quickest car, Norris was quick to answer.
“Yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious.”
Without the pace to fight at the front, McLaren gambled on a one-stop strategy, hoping a virtual safety car or safety car would play into its hands.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
“Yeah, we tried. I mean, we were not there on pace or anything, so we had to give it a shot and if there’s any VSC or safety car, we were right in contention for a good podium. Even a P2 for a lot of it. I feel like it was a good race today. I feel like the pace was strong. I feel like I got everything out of it, so I have to be happy even though a P5 doesn’t sound amazing.”
The strategy left Norris on ageing hard tyres late in the race, where he held off Verstappen for several laps before the Red Bull driver, who had already stopped twice, found a way past.
“Inevitably as soon as he had Overtake [mode] and I had to use Boost [mode] to defend, he was going to come past quite easily. So he did that and as soon as I then have traffic on old tyres, then it’s kind of game over and it’s easy for everyone else.”
McLaren also swapped its drivers during the race, with Norris saying he had been “a lot quicker all weekend” than Piastri, so the swap was “just the obvious thing to do”.
The result has big implications in the constructors’ championship. McLaren arrived in Austin seven points ahead of Red Bull in the fight for third. The teams will now leave Austin level with five rounds remaining.
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