Lando Norris: I’ve been making mistakes all weekend in F1 Chinese GP
The Briton had a tough sprint race on Saturday morning and could only qualify third for the main race
McLaren Formula 1 driver Lando Norris admitted that he has been making far too many mistakes in Shanghai after qualifying third for the Chinese Grand Prix.
Norris was trying to usurp teammate Oscar Piastri in the final moments of Q3 when he made an error and had to abort his last flying lap.
That allowed Piastri to take his first career pole position, while George Russell later denied McLaren a front-row lockout with a last-gasp effort in his Mercedes.
Australian GP winner Norris has had a difficult weekend in China so far, setting just the sixth-fastest time in sprint qualifying on Friday and struggling to eighth in the short-distance race on Saturday morning.
Hailing McLaren for improving the car following the sprint, the 25-year-old admitted that it was own mistakes that prevented him from taking the fight to Piastri for pole position.
“I’m always disappointed when I'm not on pole,” Norris said. “Oscar deserves it today, he has done a very good job all weekend. I’m happy for him, his first pole in Formula 1, so it's always cool.
“Just a couple of mistakes again, kind of been my case this weekend. The car is feeling a bit better today, I'm a lot more comfortable with the car.
“A step in the right direction, especially from yesterday when I was struggling a lot and even this morning I was struggling a lot. A much better direction that we are going in. Not too disappointed.”
Norris described the behaviour of the MCL39 as “feisty” and explained that a number of changes had to be made to his car after he was “nowhere” in the sprint race.
“I said that plenty of times, it is [tough to drive],” he said. “It's still quick enough, we never doubted that it's the quickest car, it can just be a little feisty at times.
“No, today is not so much that. Today was just mistakes from my side, that is all.”
“We changed quite a lot on the car because we were nowhere and we worked quite hard to make some improvements into quali and hopefully for the race tomorrow. We will see.”
