Norris struggling: "I can't drive the car the way I'd like to"

Lando Norris is having an excellent season so far in his third year at McLaren. The 21-year-old driver has been on the podium twice and is currently third in the championship. Yet not everything is going the way he wants.

"I think we have every right to be optimistic," said Norris at Motorsport-Total.com after his podium finish in Monaco. "It's still nice to think I finished on the podium in Monaco. But now the focus is on this weekend and getting a top-three result again."

A good classification should certainly be possible for McLaren, but Norris is keeping a wary eye on the race. "We have a good car, we have proved that on several occasions, but we cannot claim to be faster than Mercedes or Red Bull."

In any case, the statistics speak in favour of Norris who has always finished in the top ten since the 2020 Italian Grand Prix. He is the only driver on the grid to do so. "I wasn't even aware of that," he explains. "I don't pay attention to things like that, but it sounds good. Hopefully, that doesn't jinx it."

Despite the good results, not everything is yet going to plan for Norris. "This year's car is different. You have to drive it differently and I'm still learning at every race. The transition from 2020 to 2021 was not easy. And I can't drive the car the way I would like to. It behaves differently from what I chose [for F1], for example. You have to adapt to that."

In Monaco, things went optimally for the young Briton for the first time. In qualifying, he finished fifth just three-tenths of Max Verstappen. "Before that, I had made mistakes, in qualifying and in the race, because I didn't know enough about the car," Norris concludes.