McLaren driver Lando Norris rued a mistake on his last run costing him what he believes could have been second place on the grid for Formula 1’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
McLaren continued its impressive late-season momentum from last term to haul both cars into Q3 at the season opener for the first time under this regulation set.
But despite ending up less than half-a-second adrift of Max Verstappen’s pole position time, Norris wound up seventh as two-tenths separated third to ninth place.
Although he had been pessimistic heading into the weekend, Norris admits McLaren’s MCL38 was performing well and bemoaned not stringing together an optimal lap.
“It was tricky. I know maybe a few more people might have mistakes in Q3, maybe the wind just changed that a little bit,” Norris said.
“And when you’re in Q3 and just pushing that a little bit more, when things change, you can make a big difference, which it did for me.
“A lot of potential today, I was feeling great all quali, so I was very happy I was putting in some good laps.
“My worst one was my final one which is not only how you want it to go but the potential was there and that’s a good thing for us as a team to know those types of things.
“Yeah, you don’t want to make these mistakes, no matter if the wind does change. You want to be able to put your laps together and the best lap together always come from Q3. And that was not something we were able to do today, but all the people too. So, yeah, in a similar boat, we wish to make smaller mistakes than this.”
With Charles Leclerc in second 0.228s behind Verstappen’s benchmark, Norris is convinced that a seamless run could have seen him secure a front-row starting spot.
However, the Briton also believes that the cooler ambient conditions present in Bahrain this week contributed to McLaren being more competitive than anticipated.
“Just to say there are a few things that all get better with low fuel, cold temperatures, like big things,” Norris added.
“So for us to be, you know, if I just put my reasonable lap in, I just didn’t make a mistake, but it wasn’t an insane lap, I still probably should have been second or third.
“For us to have that, I think knowing what we have and what we still want to be able to improve on is pretty positive. But that’s when everything gets good.
“But as soon as we see, you know, hotter conditions and higher fuel and things like that, FP1, FP2, then that’s when we struggle just a little bit more. So things fall away and that’s why I think we really didn’t feel great times at times in the test. And as everything’s kind of calmed down a bit in the evenings here, we started to get better and better at times.”
Norris concedes that he is unsure about McLaren’s pace in race trim, but he predicts that strategy could prove decisive with several teams separated by fine margins.
“I didn’t get to do too much high-fuel running in the pre-season test, so it was even a bit for me to figure out the way it’s marked,” he admitted.
“But that pace, like Oscar [Piastri] said, was pretty reasonable yesterday, and I think that also turned into low-fuel pace.
“It’s just very close, like you saw, I think close between different teams, which is always probably the most exciting thing. You’re going to know that Ferrari are going to be going for it at the beginning. We’ve got Mercedes, Aston, us, so we’ve got a good amount of teams all fighting for some good positions.
“What I’d like to say is, hopefully you want to be us trying to just break away from the cars behind. I hope, but at the same time, yeah, I think there’s eight cars who are all pretty tied together. And I think that would be a good show for everyone and everyone watching.
“It will also be a good chance for us if it doesn’t spread out too much to try things and for everyone to try things in strategy and so forth. So I think it’ll be exciting.”
Asked what would represent a good result for McLaren, Norris replied: “Second! I don’t think I can answer it. I don’t know.
“It’s very close between what everyone did yesterday in the long runs. Mercedes, us, Astons, Ferraris, if you looked at Max, he was the only one – he didn’t even press to be honest, the only one to look a little bit ahead. The rest of us were doing similar times give or take. And therefore we don’t know, we’re not able to predict this type of thing.
“The smaller non-driving parts almost make the big difference tomorrow. So, otherwise, it’s close. We’ll figure it out.”
