Norris: Lack of straight-line speed “painful” | “We got it wrong…”

Norris dropped like a stone from seventh on the grid as McLaren’s lack of straight-line speed left him exposed.

Things got worse for the British driver when he switched to the hard tyre, dropping further down the order.

McLaren’s decision to fit him with the softs proved crucial to his late-race recovery, propelling him into the top seven as he showed great pace in clear air.

Norris ultimately held on to finish seventh despite late pressure from Esteban Ocon.

Reflecting on the start at Spa, Norris admitted it was “impossible to overtake” with McLaren’s downforce levels.

“I was barely making eighth gear,” he said. “I was that slow on the straights. I just couldn’t defend, I couldn't attack. It was impossible to overtake. I didn’t overtake one person on the straights. I was too slow. I only overtook two or three people today and that was all in the corners. It was painful. 

“The beginning was so painful. We tried to go on the hard - the hard wasn’t a good enough tyre. So we had one thing left to try and that was to put a soft tyre on, and this was on Lap 24, Lap 25. So I was expecting to box again for another soft at some point but we were somehow in seventh. We undercut like 10 cars I think which I was pretty surprised by - a good surprise of course but I thought I’d be boxing again. 

“They were like we are going to try and go to the end and I was like… I pushed the tyres so much in the beginning I thought my race was going to be pretty much over and I was going to start to struggle too much. We kept the tyres alive and stayed in P7. stayed ahead of Esteban who was closing quite quickly. I am happy.”

There was some speculation in the middle of the race that Norris was nursing a steering issue - something Norris dismissed when asked about it afterwards.

“Who said that? No. We were just that slow,” he added. “Everyone was overtaking me before the DRS activation zone. Honestly, I had a run on Alex out of Turn 1. I was coming at him out of Turn 1, I had new tyres, he had old tyres, and I think by the end of the straight he pulled three or four car lengths from me and this was me with DRS, using overtake - it was just painful. I couldn’t actually overtake a car on the straight today. 

“Painful. We got it wrong - we’ve admitted it already. We were way too high on downforce and it didn’t help us out in any way. We will review it and make sure we do a better job next time.”