Norris feels “lucky” after ‘small but costly’ F1 crash

Lando Norris feels fortunate to have avoided more damage from his crash which brought a premature end to his Friday running at Formula 1’s Tuscan Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver speared into the barriers between Turn 3 and Turn 4 after dipping his left-hand wheels onto the gravel during the qualifying simulation runs in second practice at Mugello.

The impact ripped off Norris’s front wing but otherwise the Briton appeared to avoid picking up any major damage to his MCL35, though he was unable to complete any high-fuel runs as a result of his session-ending incident.

“It felt a lot worse in the car than what it looked like but I think there’s some damage to the steering and maybe the rear,” Norris said.

“Nothing major luckily. I don’t think I damaged much to the floor or the wings, apart from the front wing. It’s not terrible, it could have been worse so I’m lucky.

“It was a small mistake from my side which was quite costly. It cost me all of the high-fuel running in P2 but it is what it is and we will try to make up for it tomorrow.

Land-noooo

Norris walked away from this crash in FP2 #TuscanGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/ykfauVB7JE

— Formula 1 (@F1) September 11, 2020

“As much as I hate the fact there was gravel because of crashing and damaging the car, it’s better like this being trickier,” he added.

“It’s more challenging and I think that’s what it should be like. Not ideal but it’s what happens sometimes.”

McLaren ended Friday 13th and 14th in the FP2 order and were over 1.6s off the pace, something Norris admitted came as a bit of a surprise to the Woking outfit.

“It was not as good as what we were hoping for coming into the weekend,” he explained.

“We were maybe expecting just to start the weekend a little bit stronger, I don’t think we’re bad or slow just the car has been quite tricky and we are maybe not as competitive as we were expecting.

“We have some work to do but if I put the laps together than I confident we can do a much better job.”