McLaren‘s Lando Norris admitted he went over the limit pushing his winning margin to 20 seconds in the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.
Norris led from pole position and took a commanding lights to victory at Singapore over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
The victory cuts Norris’ deficit to Verstappen in the Drivers’ standings to 52 points with six rounds remaining.
Still, the fine Sunday afternoon could have gone way worse with Norris having multiple encounters with the barriers.
“I was flat out,” Norris said post-race after his Singapore GP victory.
“I was pushing a bit too hard. It was definitely not like I was cruising. I was pushing to open up a gap, and at one point I wanted to try and open up a pit window to give myself an opportunity to maybe box at the end of the race for quickest lap, if I needed to try and achieve that.
“Daniel [Ricciardo] stole that away from me at the end of the race.
“The car was not easy to drive, especially on the hard tyres. I struggled a lot more than what I did on the medium, and especially just with the traffic and things.
“It was a bit harder to manage the second half of the stint compared to the first, but I was pushing.
“Let me tell you, I was definitely pushing probably too much, hence the mistakes I was making or the two mistakes I made with the wall. But otherwise things were going well.”
Minor damage had little impact on Lando Norris’ Singapore GP victory charge
Despite glancing the walls on multiple occasions and even avoiding a head-on shunt into the barriers after locking up, Norris escaped relatively unscathed.
Norris was concerned he’d damaged his front wing before his only pit-stop but he felt the effect was minimal.
“The team said that there was something with the front wing maybe being a little bit off,” Norris explained.
“I hit the front wing against the barrier, so it might have tweaked it a touch, but I don’t think probably much to change it.
“Hard to know on these cars. As soon as you tweak something a tiny bit, it can have quite a big impact, but nothing that I was probably feeling.
“As soon as I did that, and I think it was more, I mean, I was pushing, but also it was just as I was catching up to the dirty air from the cars ahead, whether they were three, four seconds ahead, as soon as it changes from the past 20 laps that I had, a little bit less grip, a little bit less downforce, tyres are going away a little bit.
“It just caught me out. So it wasn’t like a lack of concentration or anything. It was just a bit of a surprise to me.
“I think the car was all good and the car’s been mega all weekend. So a big thanks to the team.”
READ MORE: McLaren’s Lando Norris untouchable in F1 Singapore GP victory
