Norris: We know we can beat Alpine

McLaren and Alpine finished the first half of the championship tied on points – both teams had 81. Lando Norris admits it won’t be easy to get ahead of such strong rivals, especially at their home circuit, but he hopes it is possible.

Lando Norris: “I’m happy with the way our team has been working lately, although I think we can do better in every race, earn a little more points, but overall we’re stable so everything is going well .

Although the 5 second penalty for not respecting the track limits made it difficult for us in Austria, and if it hadn’t happened, I think we would have battled with Mick Schumacher for 6th place. But most of the time we manage to fully exploit the car’s potential, and although many other teams brought technical innovations to the races, we still did well, kept fighting and earned points, which is important.

I hope we can continue a series of successful performances in France, but the opponents are very strong and it will be very difficult for us. Alpine is very fast and Fernando manages to show an excellent pace in qualifying, and the riders of this team also perform quite consistently.

Alpine and McLaren have the same number of points in the Constructors’ Championship, but it is difficult to stay ahead of this team. Nevertheless, we have a fighting spirit and we know we can do it. We have already managed to outperform the Alpine in races, even though our car was not as fast. We’re going to try that next weekend, even if it’s a home race for them.

Last year in France we found the right approach to work with rubber, so of course we hope that this will be the case now. Personally, I have been able to show good results on this track more than once.”

However, Lando is concerned that again, as in Austria, difficulties may arise in respecting the circuit limits at the Paul Ricard circuit: “It is extremely difficult to match the position of your car on the track. high speed to an accuracy of centimeters. Especially if there’s a strong wind blowing, or if you’re chasing an opponent’s car, attacking a curb, or hitting some bump.

The driver in the cockpit is only a few centimeters from the surface of the track and this year the ground clearance of the new generation of cars has become even lower. You try to navigate visually at first, but you see the track and the white line on it somewhere in front of you, about 10 or 15 meters away. In addition, you rely on your gut feeling, you react to various events on the track, you make certain decisions and it is very difficult to position the car on the track with centimeters precision.

Sometimes that is frustrating, as was the case in Austria where I was among the fined, but I understand why I was punished. That’s why I’d like to have gravel traps in every corner – then if you fly off the track you will definitely fly out and get stuck in the gravel, and no other penalties are needed.