Lando Norris says McLaren was taken aback by its result at the Singapore Grand Prix after the outfit jumped Alpine for fourth in the standings.
McLaren struggled for pace in Singapore but Norris performed strongly throughout the weekend and moved up to fourth after Lewis Hamilton slid into the wall.
Norris went on to classify fourth, with Daniel Ricciardo profiting from the overcut to vault to fifth, giving McLaren a haul of 22 points.
Rivals Alpine suffered a double retirement, with both Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon halted by power unit failures, allowing McLaren to move back into fourth in the standings.
“That was the last thing we expected after FP1 and Friday,” said Norris. “So I mean, I think we were in for P4 the whole time. You know, Lewis crashed on his own. Max [Verstappen] went straight past me. So we were fighting for P4 just on pure merit.
“It was a fun race, like probably one of the most difficult races I’ve done in Formula 1, just because of the level of concentration needed.
“And clearly how easy it was to make mistakes, you know, and a lock up or go wide in a wet patch, whatever.
“Even more so for Daniel and the strategy from their side to get him up to fifth on a day when our competitors didn’t score any points was even better.
“Friday looked like one of our worst weekends so far. And I think on pace, we were still like a mile off. Not in conditions like today. But Alpine were probably at least half a second a lap quicker in complete wet conditions or complete dry conditions. Maybe even more than that.
“We were expecting the opposite. We were expecting them to be P4 and P5 or P5 and P6 and us to maybe not even finish in the points. And it ended up being the opposite way around. So a pleasant surprise.”
