Lando Norris: 'One more lap and I would've had Albon'

Lando Norris thinks that, if the Belgian Grand Prix had lasted one more lap, he would’ve passed Alex Albon and taken P6.

After a fairly quiet race, the McLaren driver, sat in P7, began to catch Albon and Esteban Ocon towards the end, with the former struggling with worn out medium tyres.

By the time they had crossed the finish line, Ocon was ahead of Albon and Norris was just behind the Red Bull. He thinks that he just needed one more lap to complete the move and secure a top-six finish.

“One more lap and I would have had Alex,” the Brit said after the race.

“I don’t know if I would have had Esteban. I think their [Renault’s] pace was much better than ours today shown by Daniel [Ricciardo] so I think the only reason I caught him was when he got stuck behind Albon.

“But yeah, one more lap would have been lovely. I would’ve been quite confident I could’ve got past Alex, he was struggling a lot, so it’s a little bit frustrating from that side.”

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? The chequered flag waves on the #BelgianGP. ???@LandoNorris finishes P7, bringing home points for the team. ? pic.twitter.com/2iscHM2oBH

— McLaren (@McLarenF1) August 30, 2020

After starting the race in P10, Norris dropped down the order at the start and was forced to fight his way back into the points.

He did so and ended up finishing comfortably inside the top 10. He says that his improved pace was largely due to a change in conditions.

“Lap 1 and the first stint was tough for me. I was struggling a lot with the confidence in the car and the tyre wear,” he added.

“The second half of the race, the weather changed a bit, cooled down, the wind died down a bit and it came into our strengths a bit more. Then I could push and I managed to have better pace than Stroll and catch the two guys at the end.

“A bit up and down, but it’s better than nothing, especially as a team it wasn’t the best day for us with Carlos [Sainz] not starting and Renault scoring a lot of points, so not ideal but I think we made the best of a bad day.”

With Renault finishing in P4 and P5, they closed the gap hugely to the teams ahead of them and are now nine behind McLaren. Norris meanwhile has moved onto the same amount of points as Charles Leclerc.

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