Lando Norris, McLaren, Monza, 2018

Norris wants practice return after just nine laps at Monza

2018 Italian Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by and

Lando Norris says he is hoping for another chance to drive McLaren’s Formula 1 car after rain limited him to just nine laps at Monza.

The team’s 18-year-old test driver ended first practice yesterday at the bottom of the timing screen. On a wet but drying track he did just five timed laps totalling less the nine minutes of running in a 90-minute session.

“I would hope because I didn’t get many laps today they would make up for it,” said Norris when asked if he was hoping to drive the car again soon.

“But I’m not too sure. Of course I’ll be pushing as much as I can and asking for it but it’s not up to me. I’ll see what happens.”

McLaren has said it will decide this month who it will appoint to partner Carlos Sainz Jnr for the 2019 F1 season. Norris is among the candidates.

“Obviously if they would like me to be in the car and improve and if I have a chance of driving next year they would want me to improve and use every opportunity possible. So we’ll wait and see what happens and see how this weekend goes. I’ll get my feedback on how I did and go from there.”

A key rival for the seat is Stoffel Vandoorne, whose car Norris drove yesterday. However he denied relations between the two have become difficult.

“I was in his car, we were in the briefings together, everything was fine. Until you get to the situation [where] you’ve signed and he’s not or something, like has happened in the past, that’s probably when it gets awkward. But for the moment everything’s cool.”

Norris also drove for McLaren in practice at Spa last weekend. He found it easier to acclimatise to his regular Formula Two car again following his second appearance.

“At Spa I struggled quite a bit more I think probably because it was wet [here] and the limit’s not quite as different compared to Formula Two,” he said. “I didn’t struggle so much, it wasn’t too much of a problem going back into Formula Two pretty much straight away I felt comfortable again.

“In Spa I felt like I’d never been in a Formula Two car before. It was quite weird getting used to the downforce and braking and power. It was a bit weird but here it was all fine.”

Norris qualified sixth for today’s Formula Two race. Championship rival George Russell took pole position.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2018 F1 season

Browse all 2018 F1 season articles

One comment on “Norris wants practice return after just nine laps at Monza”

  1. Yeah, Norris got the same treatment as Stoffel did at Spa. (It was the Stoffel car this time around also, that’s an extra 0.3 second vs the other one) McLaren is a mess and he’ll be better off getting the hell out of there.

Comments are closed.