Norris: Maybe I’ll smile a little wider this time

After a confident win in Singapore, Lando Norris spoke about some of the events during his race, as well as his duties for the final quarter of the season.

Q: Lando, your win was not in doubt at all – how nice is it to win a race where you clearly dominated?
Lando Norris: Every win is still a win. But anyway, the most important thing was just winning the race. It’s satisfying, no matter the circumstances.

Of course, the bigger the advantage, the bigger the joy, but I’m just happy that we won, got 25 points and got another victory. This race was going to be tough at first, but I felt comfortable behind the wheel every day of the weekend, so all that was left was to go out on track and work as I had worked before. And we did it.

Q: McLaren had a great car all weekend, but how aggressively did you have to attack to gain such a commanding lead?
Lando Norris: I attacked with full force, probably too aggressively. Of course, you can’t say that I was riding at a relaxed pace. On the contrary, I tried to increase my lead further and at one point I even wanted to try to pull away enough so that I could eventually make a pit stop and set the fastest lap.

But just before the finish Daniel Ricciardo took it from me. In general we had to work hard, it’s not an easy race. And I can’t say that the driving was that easy: I had much more problems on hard tyres than on medium tyres.

Also, due to traffic and other issues, I struggled a bit more in the second half of this part of the distance than in the first, but I kept attacking. Probably even too intensely, which explains the mistakes I made, because I hit the barriers a few times. Otherwise everything went well.

Q: You mention errors: did these contacts with the bump stops somehow affect the behavior of the car?
Lando Norris: I don’t think so. That is, the team said there was something wrong with the front wing; it was probably working a little less efficiently. I touched the barrier with the front wing and maybe adjusted it a little bit, but I don’t think that changed anything.

It’s hard to say though. When a car suffers even a very small damage, the consequences can usually be very noticeable, but like this I didn’t feel anything… I want to say I was really attacking, but when I overtook the circlers I found myself in the turbulence zone behind someone’s cars, while someone was three or four seconds ahead of me. And then the grip got a little worse and the downforce decreased. The tires started to wear out faster and that surprised me.

Overall it wasn’t a loss of concentration or anything like that. It just came as a surprise to me. But I think the car worked well overall this weekend, so big thanks to the team.

Q: Do you think such clear dominance was due to some of the peculiarities of the Singapore circuit, or do you expect to be able to build a confident lead with the car in all the remaining races of the season?
Lando Norris: We haven’t changed anything on the car since the last two weekends, we even had to change the fenders a little bit and a few other things because of complaints from our rivals, but we still had a great performance this weekend, so honestly I don’t think it was influenced by the characteristics of the track.

It’s just that the performance of our machine was beyond praise. I didn’t manage to win on all the tracks, even though I felt my speed allowed it and I was capable of it. But sometimes I made mistakes myself and couldn’t handle the task well. In general, there were times when I didn’t work on something and had to pay for it.

But here, when I came out of Turn 1 as the leader and everything went without complications, we managed to achieve the result we have today.

Q: You have closed the gap to Max Verstappen by another seven points. What strategic goals do you set yourself for the remaining six races of the season?
Lando Norris: Silly question, don’t you agree? I’m going to try to repeat the same result as in Singapore, but Max and Red Bull will also keep resisting, there’s no doubt about that. In general it’s pretty clear that I want to do everything in my power every weekend to earn maximum points. Including the best lap.

But if Max continues to finish second and Red Bull continues to work like this weekend, there is little I can do. Therefore, I will only concentrate on my job and the tasks our team faces.

Q: You drove your best lap with an excellent time, which was only surpassed by Daniel Ricciardo at the end of the race, when he pitted shortly before the finish to prevent you from earning an extra point. How did you react when you heard about this? After all, this was made possible thanks to the special relationship between Red Bull Racing and RB…
Lando Norris: Daniel deserves congratulations. I don’t know, because I couldn’t argue with that. My best lap was when the tires were still in good condition halfway through the second stint. But you understand, you still don’t deserve all the points.

I had been able to set the fastest laps a couple of times in the past few weekends, but on the hard tyres I couldn’t go any faster than the guy who had just been given a set of soft tyres halfway through the stint. That’s life in general.

Question: To continue this topic: of course RB could not earn anything with such actions. But do you think it is fair that your bonus point was taken away by a team that has nothing to do with the fight for the title, but has the same owners as Red Bull Racing?
Lando Norris: I don’t know, but this probably happened in Formula 1 before I was born. In short, I have nothing to complain about. There have been races before where we took this bonus point from other teams. In general, everything here is logical. They made a smart move and I’m happy for Daniel.

Q: Do you think the rivalry with Max for the title will continue until the last race of the season?
Lando Norris: I have no idea, I can’t predict the future. I’ve already said that I’m doing everything I can. But I have no doubt that Red Bull and Max are doing the same. Of course, the rivalry will remain extremely intense until the end of the championship, and we can only do our utmost to earn as many points as possible. We will also try to win races.

But this is another stupid question. In the sense that now everyone is doing their best – both us and them. I still have to win back a lot of points and that is not an easy task, because our rivals are Red Bull and Max, who dominated the championship last year.

It’s the same team and the same driver, so not much has changed. At the moment McLaren is doing better because our car is faster than the RB20. For this it’s thanks to the team, which is very smart, with all kinds of original solutions, because these are the rules of the game.

In general I do my best and try to win. And Max tries to prevent this. In general we wait and see how everything ends.

Source: F1 News

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