Difficult hat-trick
The proverb says that “there is no two without three”, but after the successes in Budapest and Zandvoort the hat-trick for Lando Norris seems complicated. In Monza FP2 the reigning world champion placed his McLaren in fourth position, behind the Mercedes of Russell and Antonelli and the Ferrari of Leclerc; however, the Englishman appeared far from satisfied when commenting on the day.
Read more Antonelli and the slipstream to Russell: “It will count a lot, we will see tomorrow”
“Today was a much more complicated day compared to the last Fridays – declared without mincing words to the official F1 channel the #1 papaya, who appeared disappointed compared to his own expectations the day before – we are struggling to find the rhythm much more than what happened in the last outings. So, yes, everything was much more complicated. We will see what we can change overnight, but we are not in as favorable a position as in the last weekends. It will be tough“.
Unreachable Mercedes
Going into more detail, Norris highlighted the areas where his McLaren seems lacking compared to the direct competitors and in particular to Mercedes: “Problems in top speed or energy management? Honestly, it’s a bit of everything – said Norris – there isn’t a single corner where we are faster than anyone else ahead of us. We are losing a bit on the straights compared to Mercedes, which in a way we expected, but it is in the high-speed [corners] phases that we lose most of our lap time, which is usually exactly where we are fast. So we have to try to understand some things, but at the moment we are simply off pace everywhere. The run together with Oscar? We did it just to see the slipstream behavior and the effect of this setup”, concluded the 2025 world champion.
