Lando Norris says the lap which earned him fifth on the grid was one of the best of his career.
He was relieved with the result after coming perilously close to elimination in the first round of qualifying.“Maybe [I’m] not so happy with Q1 and Q2, we were a bit on the cusp of getting knocked out. But I think I recovered well.
“I got back in a good rhythm, especially for Q3, and put in probably one of my best laps I’ve done in Formula 1.”
Norris’s engineer praised his first run in Q3, which was done on a used set of soft tyres. He then improved on his final lap.
“I’m very happy,” he said. “[It’s a] better position than we were probably ever thinking coming into today, but the conditions were very, very different.
“So it was a bit unexpected, or we didn’t really know what we could achieve. But I think today and that lap time I did was one of the best.”
Carlos Sainz Jnr put the other McLaren seventh on the grid and said he was “happier with the car” this weekend.
“It looks like we’ve improved a bit the car balance and my feeling with the car in general, I put together some strong laps along qualifying.
“Just in Q3 [I was] a bit unfortunate, I just didn’t put a very good lap together. I lost the rear on exits quite a lot and that made me lose along the straights. So a bit of a shame there.”
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2020 F1 season
- Pictures: Wrecked chassis from Grosjean’s Bahrain fireball crash to go on display
- Bottas vs Rosberg: Hamilton’s Mercedes team mates compared after 78 races each
- F1 revenues fell by $877 million in Covid-struck 2020 season
- Hamilton and Mercedes finally announce new deal for 2021 season
- F1 audience figures “strong” in 2020 despite dip in television viewers
Tor
1st August 2020, 19:42
Great by Norris and McLaren. The Sainz hype train seems to be derailing even before he gets to Ferrari.
Adrian
1st August 2020, 22:25
Put it this way. HUL out qualified Sainz at Renault. And then Ricc out qualified Hul over the course of the season, and Hul ended up losing his seat. But some how Sainz ends up at Ferrari.
slowmo (@slowmo)
1st August 2020, 22:50
Points are awarded on Sundays though and Hulkenberg has been a serial choker in F1. No way I’d take him over Sainz and Ferrari seem to agree.
GechiChan (@gechichan)
2nd August 2020, 8:15
Maybe not Hulk at Ferrari, but Danny Ric definately over Sainz, who is really overrated IMO. He’s decent and stays out of trouble, which with a bit of luck and chaos up-front brings him (well deserved) points. But teammate battles and qualifying stats show that he never relaly been exploiting the car to maximum potential, in none of the teams he’s been at.
Selbbin (@selbbin)
2nd August 2020, 8:48
But Ferrari wanted a number 2, and Ricciardo is not a number 2.
Carlos Medrano (@carlosmedrano)
2nd August 2020, 0:29
Even last year I thought Lando was faster just inexperience and bad luck