Lando Norris believes his pole position lap for the Austrian Grand Prix represents progress in his ongoing title campaign, but said it does not make up for a series of mistakes he made earlier this season.
Norris qualified 0.521 seconds clear of Ferrari‘s Charles Leclerc in second place, while his McLaren teammate and title rival Oscar Piastri had to settle for third after he was forced to abandon his final Q3 lap due to yellow flags.
The positive result on Saturday followed two weeks of soul searching for Norris, who collided with Piastri at the last round in Canada, retired from the race and dropped him 22 points off his teammate in the championship standings.
“Nice to see the old me back every now and then, huh?” Norris said over team radio after securing pole position. “Well done, the car was pretty damn beautiful.”
While Norris welcomed the strong performance on Saturday, he underlined the need for greater consistency in his performances after making costly mistakes in qualifying in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Canada earlier this season.
“I mean, it’s very satisfying, but, again, it’s about consistency,” Norris said. “Everyone can be a hero in one weekend.
“It’s progress. It’s steps forward. I’m very happy with today, but it’s still a long journey. It’s a long season.
“The job I needed to do today, I did. And it doesn’t make up for the last few weekends or anything, but I did it today, and that’s what mattered. So, yeah, very satisfied and happy for putting it together when I needed to.”
Norris’ lap on Saturday represented his third pole position of the season, following on from Monaco in May and the opening round in Australia.
“On the whole, it was easily my best qualifying of the year from a delivery point of view from every single lap I did,” Norris said. “I still made a couple of mistakes here and there, but none that cost me a lap or anything, just maybe a tenth here or half a tenth there.
“So, I think on deliveries, consistency and of course putting it in when it counts in Q3 was easily the best lap I’ve done for this whole season, probably even better than Monaco, honestly. Maybe not as exciting a lap as Monaco, but definitely a better put together lap than I did there.”
McLaren brought the first part of its last major upgrade of the year to the car in Austria, including a new front wing and revised suspension fairings.
The upgrade followed a mechanical suspension tweak at the Canadian Grand Prix, aimed at helping Norris’ complaints of a lack of feel from the front of the car, although team principal Andrea Stella has stressed the two were separate and the Canada suspension change should be viewed more as a set-up option available to both drivers.
“Some of that is small things have allowed me to get that out of the car from the changes within the car,” Norris said. “Whether that’s the upgrades or not, it’s always very difficult to tell still, but it was definitely the most confident and comfortable I’ve been in terms of getting lap time out of the car and understanding that.
“I think it showed today that when I have those feelings, well, it’s still not all there, but more there than before, I can have a day like today.
“So it shows that the feelings I’ve been requiring, the feelings that I’ve not been getting as easily, when they are more my way and more where I want them to be, I can put in better performances and have days like today.
“So, I think that’s reassuring for myself, which is a very nice feeling. But it’s still about consistency. This is one weekend, I’ve got to do it for another, what, 12 or 13 or something.”
Piastri was confident he could have joined his teammate on the front row of the grid in Austria had Pierre Gasly not spun in front of him and caused yellow flags that forced him to back off. However, the championship leader doubts he would have been a match for Norris.
“I think through all of qualifying, I was missing that last tenth, but not getting the chance to do my final Q3 run was quite frustrating,” Piastri said.
“Sometimes those things are going to happen. I was quite happy that I didn’t lose more spots by not doing that. So, third’s still an okay place to start around here. You can race around this track, so try and make some progress.
“It’s very difficult around here to get that perfect lap because there’s a lot of corners that have gravel on the exit, and you’ve got to be pretty careful there. But there’s also a lot of corners that you miss an apex by five centimetres one way or the other, and you’ve lost a couple of tenths easily.
“So it’s not the easiest track to hook up even though it’s short, and I just kind of felt like I didn’t quite do that today. So, a bit of a shame.”
Source: espn.com