The reigning world champion has won back-to-back at the Hungaroring and Zandvoort and taken pole for both. Then, standing in front of reporters in the Netherlands, he used the moment to say the quiet part out loud.
“I know I’ve just won two races in a row and two poles in a row, but at the minute, I don’t have the car I need to fight for a championship.”
Norris is chasing Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli, who leads the Drivers’ Championship on 242 points to Norris’s 159 after 12 of 23 rounds. The 83-point gap is why the self-assessment matters.
McLaren’s slow-corner problem
Norris was explicit about where the deficit lives. McLaren is untouchable in high-speed corners, and Mercedes is untouchable everywhere the speed drops.
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“We’re very, very strong in high speed, and that’s the place we’ve improved the car the most is high-speed performance. No one matches us in high speed, and that’s a good thing.”
“But their advantage that they have to us in slow speed is also crazy. And therefore, I don’t have the confidence to say, ‘Yeah, I can easily fight for a championship through the rest of the season.'”
His description of the character of the deficit was blunter still.
“As soon as it gets proper tight and twisty, this is just when the car doesn’t like it.”
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A direct ask to McLaren
The line that reads as a formal request came at the end of the same conversation.
“There needs to be a bit of a focus, I believe, on more certain areas.”
“If we can improve on these slow speeds, I’m confident that I can win every race this season. If we don’t, then it’s much more difficult to believe so.”
Monza is the test McLaren cannot fake
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has said the same thing in softer language. He has argued that back-to-back wins at Zandvoort and the Hungaroring tell him little about what is coming, because Monza is a completely different regime.
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“The next race will be in Monza, and if we think about the demands of Zandvoort and Hungary, and then think about the demands of Monza, we are in a completely different regime.”
“We know that drag is not necessarily a point of strength of our car. And, for instance, there’s a lot of braking as well, which is not necessarily a point of strength of our car either.”
The Italian Grand Prix runs at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza from 4 to 6 September, with the race on Sunday. Long straights and slow chicanes are precisely the combination Norris has just described as McLaren’s worst.
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