Norris On Verstappen's Damning Verdict: 'Would Much Happier Be In His Position'
F1Thursday, 12 September 2024 at 22:00
Lando Norris reacted to the statement that disappointed Max Verstappen issued following the 2024 Italian Grand Prix, where he finished in P6.
After qualifying in P7 and crossing the finish line in P6 following 53 laps around the Monza Circuit, Max Verstappen issued a pretty negative verdict on Red Bull's championship chances.
The 26-year-old F1 driver asserted that, as things stood following the Grand Prix in Italy, neither of the two championships was achievable for Red Bull, and he didn't expect to win any race this season without significant improvement.
Despite finishing 31.779 seconds ahead of the Dutchman, the 24-year-old McLaren driver didn't agree with Verstappen's statements. According to GpBlog, he said:
"That's Max just saying what he wants to say but he's still leading by 60 something points. I have eight races to catch 60 something points, and it's not easy to do that, even if I win every race it's still not an easy thing to achieve."
"So he's still easily the one in a better position. I would much happier be in his position than in my position."
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella announced ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix that Norris will have more support from his team, mainly Oscar Piastri, moving forward.
However, even with the help of his teammate, Norris doesn't think it will be easy to catch up if Red Bull manages to identify and fix their current problem.
"As soon as Red Bull can figure out where they've gone wrong and what they've struggled with, they're a team I expect within a few races to be fixing their problems and coming back strong again."
"That might be his feeling after one bad race and I would say it's only one bad race. It's not like they've been that far off at every race this year. That [Monza] was probably their worst race."
The 24-year-old F1 driver also went on to point out that Max Verstappen's qualifying times weren't far off despite the significant struggles.
In Monza, Verstappen's final flying lap was 0,695 seconds slower (a quite significant margin) than Lando Norris's pole position time.
However, the Dutchman's Q3 times were not very representative. His Q2 time was much better, and that one would have been 0,335 seconds away from the pole position in Q3. Norris added:
"But Max has still not been far off pole in many races, he's still been close to winning many races, so it's still easily possible for him."
"I think he just says it to make himself probably feel a little bit better, but he's still in a much stronger position than I am."
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