This is why Norris made up so much time on Verstappen at Imola
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Lando Norris fell just short of a race victory at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. The Briton finished second, trailing by just seven-tenths at the chequered flag. Especially in the race's second half, Norris gained a huge amount of ground on his rival. In the post-race press conference, he spoke at length about his resurgence.
In the first part of the Grand Prix in Imola, Norris lost a lot of time compared to Verstappen, but that changed as the race progressed. "I basically changed all my switches on the steering wheel to try and help the rear tyres and try to kill the fronts, because I just had too much front at that point. And maybe five, 10 laps later, things started to come back to me. So making all these changes and changing the differential and the brake balance and all of those things really allowed me to kind of bring the tyres back into a good window. As soon as I got there, I felt confident enough to push," Norris revealed.
'Breathing room' allowed Norris to push
The McLaren driver said the track conditions were very tricky, and he wasn't the only one to struggle. The Miami Grand Prix winner said that other drivers' mistakes helped him feel more comfortable. "When Charles was behind me, I didn't have a lot more than what I had. And if I did, I probably would have made a mistake and went off track. It was tricky. But as soon as Charles made the mistake, it gave me a bit of breathing room. I was like, ‘OK, maybe now I can try to push it a little bit more’, and it started to come back to me. It's tough. It's so tricky on this kind of circuit. you have a couple laps where you don't oversteer and things feel better but then you oversteer and then things feel worse, so you can go very quickly up and down." Norris concluded.
The Brit will be looking to continue his fine form in Monaco next weekend.