Lando Norris struggles with the fast Williams, whose rear end he knows well enough, but enjoyed the duel with Alexander Albon
For more than 20 laps at last weekend’s Monza Formula One race, Lando Norris hung in the DRS window of Alexander Albon, basically tailgating the Williams for half the race. But the McLaren driver couldn’t find a way past until the end of the race, so he must have been dreaming about the Williams’ gearbox that night.
“But I knew it quite well beforehand because I’ve been in that position a few times in previous years,” Norris said after the race. It is well known that the Williams with its high top speed is often a stumbling block – especially when top speed is one of the weaknesses as it is with the McLaren.
“They were just too fast for us on the straights,” he complains. “Even with DRS, I was maybe only two or three km/h faster than him.” In the end, it was only eighth place for Norris at Monza. “It’s tough because the Williams maybe didn’t give us as many points as we could have got, but he drove a good race and limited our options.”
In doing so, he praised his good friend Alexander Albon: “He drove a good race and didn’t make any mistakes, which is a bit annoying,” Norris said.
At one point, however, the two got a little too close to each other in turn 1, which resulted in a small complaint from Norris, who felt pushed away. After the race, however, that was forgotten: “I was next to him and I think he knew I was there. So he definitely went off the brakes and went in a bit harder than normal,” he said.
Almost like Hamilton/Verstappen 2021
Norris ran out of space as a result. “If I had tried to stay on the inside at turn two, there would have been an accident. Then I’m sure we would have done what Max and Lewis did [in 2021],” said the McLaren driver.
But he sees it as half as bad after the race: “We drove fairly, including him. Of course, sometimes you have to put your elbows out, which he did. But it was a good race from him,” he praises.
LAP 38/51
Norris lunges at Albon, but runs wide at Turn 1 and cedes the position backItalianGP F1 pic.twitter.com/QbtYB1Z9Np
– Formula 1 (@F1) September 3, 2023
Albon did lose out on one occasion, however, to Lewis Hamilton, who had also passed Norris earlier in the race. While Norris got to look at the Williams’ rear wing for half the race, Hamilton made relatively short work of it, but that didn’t frustrate Norris.
“He was on a different strategy,” Norris waves off. That’s because Hamilton had started on the Hards and then only switched to the Mediums in the second stint. “Mercedes is also much quicker than us here,” he adds.
More like racing than just sitting behind Albon
Maybe Norris could have benefited from Hamilton’s five-second penalty for colliding with Norris’ teammate Oscar Piastri, though. In the end it had no effect as Hamilton finished more than five seconds ahead of Albon, but had Albon and Norris worked together they might have had a smaller gap.
“Yeah, it can be,” says the McLaren driver, “but I don’t want to just sit behind for the whole race. I want to race and have some fun. No, I’m not frustrated, he was just faster. “
They battled on track, then bantered off it! @LandoNorris @alex_albon ItalianGP F1 pic. twitter.com/JXcE9UEJTj
– Formula 1 (@F1) September 4, 2023
But the McLaren driver can still live with eighth place: “A few small points. Maybe we were hoping for a little more, but at times we didn’t expect to finish in the points today either, so from that point of view I’m satisfied,” he says, talking about “damage limitation”.
“At the same time, it’s good to see the progress we’ve made on a track with low downforce,” he says, knowing that McLaren would have been hopelessly outgunned some time ago. “But we made some good improvements and it was a race-ready car, which is a good step forward. And there’s only one more track with low downforce this season. “
