After holding off Mercedes’ George Russell to finish second in Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, McLaren’s Lando Norris said his team has reached a level where “we’re not satisfied with second.”
The Briton led much of the race but fell away in the latter stages to eventually finish 3.8 seconds behind Max Verstappen.
Norris’ McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri was forced to settle for fifth after a late overtake from Lewis Hamilton pushed him out of the battle for the top three.
“We should’ve won the race today and we didn’t,” Norris told reporters after the race. “Frustrating. We had the pace today, it was pretty dry at the end, and it turned out that it didn’t matter too much. … We didn’t do a good enough job as a team to box when we should’ve done and not get stuck behind the safety car. I don’t think it was an unlucky kind of thing — not the same as Miami — this was just making a wrong call.”
He added: “It’s on me, and it’s on the team, and something we’ll discuss after. We’re at a level now where we’re not satisfied with second. The target is to win and we didn’t do that, so it’s frustrating, but a tough race and to still end up in second when it could always be worse is still a good result.”
Norris took the lead from Russell on Lap 22 and stormed ahead, before Logan Sargeant caused the first safety car and a run of pit stops, ultimately scuppering Norris’ lead.
As the track surface dried out from the earlier rain, Verstappen and Russell pitted, but Norris stayed out an extra two laps — a decision that benefitted him by coming out of the pit lane ahead of Russell.
“Staying out on the intermediate tyre helped me have a chance against George,” Norris said. “I overcut him, then I didn’t do a good enough job afterwards and he was way quicker than us on the dry and on the hard tyres, so that was completely the right call and a good decision from us to stay out — it gave me a lot of lap time.
“It’s not the timing of the safety car, I had enough time to box and we didn’t box, so it was a mistake on us as a team and something we didn’t do a good enough job with.”
Norris has closed the gap to Charles Leclerc, who is second in the drivers’ championship, to seven points.
With the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona coming up in two weeks, Norris expects things to get even tighter with Mercedes joining the…
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