“It’s a cool feeling, it’s incredible”– Lando Norris reveals his nervy experience while fighting against Sergio Perez for Monaco podium.
While Max Verstappen was being chased by his former Toro Rosso teammate Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez was on a hunt for P3, which Lando Norris possessed.
However, the narrowness of the Monte Carlos circuit didn’t allow Perez to overtake him; Norris says he was full of nervousness when it was happening that it was incredible.
“It’s a cool feeling,” Norris said. “You don’t know how cool it is until you’re actually there; it’s incredible. It’s a fricking long race, especially with Perez the last few laps.
“I know you can defend relatively easily in Monaco, but there’s still just that pressure and seeing him in my mirrors every time I go round the corner is just a bit stressful.
“We were there, you know, I was keeping up in the first stint. The second stint we struggled a bit more on the harder tyre but we had good pace all weekend and it’s paid off today.”
Tricky managing fuel and tyres
Norris admits that the short passages of Monaco will help him if he kept taking good exits from the corners and confessed that managing fuel and tyres was tricky. “I think the Red Bull is a bit quicker than us, they were blatantly faster,” Norris added.
“But it’s a track you can defend relatively easily on, as long as you’ve got them covered into Turn 1 and Turn 10, then you’re in good shape, so as long as I didn’t make any mistakes there then I knew I’d be in with a good shot.”
“It was more just managing a couple of things like the fuel, the tyres, things like that which made my life a lot more tricky than ideal, but it’s the way it is. It’s the way races go sometimes, but it paid off so I’m not complaining.”
