Lando Norris says he was by no means involved by the hole to Oscar Piastri on Friday on the Belgian Grand Prix after beating his annoyed teammate to pole place in qualifying Saturday.
Piastri was quickest in Dash qualifying by practically half a second over Max Verstappen, and 0.6s over Norris, with a robust efficiency at Spa-Francorchamps. It was Norris who hit again to take pole on Saturday afternoon, although, beating Piastri by a bit below 0.1s, and he says there was an excessive amount of product of the hole on Friday.
“Everybody was fairly anxious after yesterday,” Norris mentioned. “I wasn’t even that far off. It was only a couple little points that we had, so I used to be assured after yesterday and assured coming into at this time. It is good to see that I may get again to the highest.
“Three tenths is simply slipstream and never being first out the pit lane … nothing to fret about. Folks prefer to make a whole lot of issues up, however no, I felt good. The automobile has been flying all weekend.
“Oscar’s been doing job all weekend, so we’re pushing one another rather a lot. It is robust since you sort of see the place your strengths and weaknesses are … and also you study from one another shortly. It is a good however robust battle that we have now on the minute.”
Having been to date away from his teammate firstly of the weekend, Piastri was left to rue a mistake in Q3 that he says price him a whole lot of lap time and ended his hopes of taking pole.
“I believe [enough time for pole was lost], yeah,” Piastri mentioned. “The lap till that time was robust, but it surely would not actually matter for those who may have carried out it. I did not. A bit disappointing. I believe each laps in Q3 had been a bit bit like that, however that is the way it goes typically. A little bit of a disgrace, however the automobile was nice once more. I felt like I used to be in a fairly good stream, simply did not fairly occur on the second lap.
“In all honesty, it felt very comparable [to Friday]. You get a couple of extra laps on softs, you discover the boundaries a bit extra, you push the restrict a bit extra, perhaps, and at this time that in all probability bit, but it surely nonetheless felt superb. I had simply as a lot confidence as yesterday, so it undoubtedly wasn’t that.”
Piastri echoed Norris’ feedback that the McLaren drivers have a troublesome state of affairs after they can see one another’s information.
“I believe we’re teammate pairing and we study rather a lot from one another each weekend,” he mentioned. “That is what makes us such group, but it surely additionally makes it troublesome if you’re attempting to battle one another. I really feel like I did an OK job at this time; simply did not fairly execute when it mattered.”
