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Painful McLaren Reality Has Hopeless Lando Norris Resort to One Plan: “Hold on for Dear Life”

Srijon Jana
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Painful McLaren Reality Has Hopeless Lando Norris Resort to One Plan: "Hold on for Dear Life"

Lando Norris put in an amazing performance at the Spanish Grand Prix Qualifying as he put his McLaren into third position, right behind the untouchable Max Verstappen and home hero Carlos Sainz. This is the best qualifying result that McLaren has been able to achieve this season.

However, Lando Norris believes that their race pace is not up to the mark and even after this brilliant qualifying result, the only strategy that Norris will resort to during the race is to hold on to his position in any way he can.

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Norris has finished right ahead of Hamilton in the Mercedes, Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll, and Esteban Ocon in the Alpine. All of these three teams are far ahead of McLaren in the constructor’s championship and have a much better car than that of the Woking side.

With the recent surge in form for the Aston Martin, it can realistically be expected that Lance Stroll would be attacking Norris in no time. Esteban Ocon is also on a good run of form as the French driver claimed a podium in the last race in Monaco. Given the situation that Norris is in right now, the young driver claims that his best hope is to hope for a top-10 finish.

Lando Norris did not expect Qualifying to go this good

Sky Sports F1 caught up with Lando Norris right after the qualifying session got over and asked him what his target would be for the main race. Norris smiled and replied, “Hold on for dear life.” The interviewer then asked, “What! To P3?” to which Norris replied, “Top 10. No, we’ll see. I mean we weren’t expecting to be so good today.”

However, one good thing that Norris can take away from the Qualifying session is that he claimed that his car felt much better than before. During the Post-Qualifying interview session, Norris said that McLaren had made some minor tweaks to his cars and they worked as expected. This will certainly give him some confidence heading into the race.

Norris explained that there was yet another reason behind his amazing performance. The Quali session had been preceded by a bit of rain, and the tricky conditions caught out a lot of drivers, but not Norris. He said, “The conditions, people just seemed to struggle a lot. I see a lot of people locking up, going off, making mistakes, and I never necessarily felt like that.”

McLaren hasn’t had the best of starts to the 2023 season

McLaren has struggled a lot with their car this season. The season opener at Bahrain was a disaster for them as the rookie Oscar Piastri had to retire following an electrical issue. Lando Norris finished the race two laps down in P17. Since then, they haven’t been able to find the form that they had in the last two seasons.

However, team boss Andrea Stella is confident that the team can make a comeback because of the new upgrades that they will be bringing in. These upgrades are expected to arrive between the Austrian Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix. According to Stella, the upgrades would result in a “noticeably different” car.

Therefore, Norris holding on to the final podium place would be a good start to the McLaren comeback that their team boss is hoping for. And if Piastri can chip in with some points as he starts from P10, it will be the cherry on the cake for McLaren.

About the author

Srijon Jana

Srijon Jana

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Srijon Jana is a Formula 1 writer at The SportsRush. As a medical undergrad with a passion for motorsports, Srijon loves juggling between cadavers and cars with ease. He started watching F1 when he was only 11, and the beautiful cars grabbed his interest. Even now, he religiously follows all the Grands Prix, and when he is not gushing over Charles Leclerc, he likes to dabble in football as well. He is a college quizzer with several state-level and national-level accolades. He is a proud Ferrari fan, and loves to pass his free time reading, watching movies, and spending some quality time with his friends and family.

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