Norris rips up dominant label, in resigned Piastri claim

17:44, 30 Aug

Updated: 18:32, 30 Aug

byNorberto Mujica

Lando Norris fell to his teammate Oscar Piastri once again. Despite seemingly having a firm grasp on the top spot in the timing sheets, the Brit could not resist Piastri's surge in performance on Saturday afternoon. A defeat that will be difficult to overcome on Sunday, believes the Brit.

Regarding his qualifying laps and his feel in the MCL39, Norris describes them as good overall, and his own state whilst driving as he believes to be 'always in a good flow.'

Nevertheless, on his second run he failed to improve despite how close everything came to be between him and teammate Piastri.

Wind cost Norris pole?

The wind, however, Norris believes might have cost him pole, highlighting once again the fine margins that define an F1 battle nowadays, and the minuscule details that compose them.

"It [the wind] can easily just favour you or not favour you. One hundredth [of a second] is pretty minimal, you know?

"So even coming out of the last corner, I'm a little bit up and I lose like two hundredths by the time I get to the start-finish line and that's pole position gone for me. So, there's not too much to complain of."

Then he looked to himself as he was not as quick as he could've been, he observes.

"I think there was a couple of places where I wasn't quite on a good enough limit and consistently abusing a little bit too much lap time today and this weekend.

"So, some places and things I need to work on, but otherwise the laps were good and I was still pretty happy."

To snatch Dutch GP win Norris sees 'incredible task' ahead

After admitting he'd have loved to be on pole, he refutes the claim that he dominated the weekend up until qualifying, pointing to the fine differences that have separated him and his teammate across the three practice sessions so far.

And on Saturday afternoon, nothing more than a trend shift happened, highlighting that the target for tomorrow is 'the guy ahead of me,' teammate Piastri.

When it gets thrown back to last year, when he overtook Max Verstappen for the win, and asked if he could do so again this year, but this time on Piastri, Norris hesitated, due to a particular trait that made the comparison out of order, at least in the Briton’s eyes.

"No offence to Max, he was in a much slower car last year, so that helped a lot.

"Oscar is in a much quicker car this year and the hardest guy to normally overtake is your teammate, especially when in a quali like today where it's split by one hundredth.

"It's going to take some magic, it's going to take some good strategy or incredible tyre saving or something.

"But it's normally pretty difficult to overtake in the first place. It's even harder to do that behind your teammate. So I'll see what I can dream up tonight."