Norris: Qualifying is unlikely to go smoothly

Lando Norris completed Friday’s practice on the first line of protocol, but he is not inclined to overestimate his result. But his partner, Oscar Piastri, crashed the car, after which he admitted that he made a mistake and went into the corner too fast.

Lando Norris (1st): “I’m happy with the result, the day was good, but I still think Red Bull is a bit faster than us. Usually on Saturday they level up in terms of speed, but we’ll see.

The car left a good impression especially with a small fuel load, but with full tanks the picture was slightly worse. We have a difficult decision to make: when choosing a setting, should we bet on qualifying or on the race? We will discuss this later, because it is difficult to overtake on this track, and even if we manage to get ahead of Red Bull in qualifying, they are too fast for us in race conditions.

Even though we’re doing well with rubber relegation, they’ll still be ahead of us, so on Sunday they probably won’t be our rivals.

I don’t think tomorrow’s qualifying will be without complications because even today we saw that there was chaos on the track at times and riders blocked each other, but this is just one of the difficulties we have to overcome. This all happens every year, because in Zandvoort there is such a close circle and the speeds are quite high. But we need to find the right approach for this route. In my opinion, however, we have already got into a good rhythm and have been able to achieve a fairly correct balance of the car.

Oscar Pistri (19th): “I exaggerated a bit, tried to go a little more aggressively through the corner, but unfortunately I ended up in the wall. The speed was too high and I lost control of the rear of the car. I am angry, including the fact that the team has a lot of work to do now, but tomorrow I will try to recoup it.

I think there should have been an accident at some point in the season, although of course it should be avoided. But I attacked a little more aggressively than I should have – it is in this turn that the cost of such a mistake is particularly high. I’ll try to improve tomorrow and then we’ll see how the rest of the weekend goes.”