Unhealthy Norris admits weekend at Spanish Grand Prix “not my peak”

In these circumstances, Norris was pleased to be in the top 10 in the 2nd quarter of the Spanish Grand Prix before a penalty for the limit of the track cost him a lap time that would put him eighth in the session, leaving 11th instead.

Norris was later able to view footage of the FIA ​​about his expensive run on the 12th turn and made the decision given the current attention of the new race directors on the white line, which is the border of the track.

But Norris admitted he felt worse than for a while.

“I haven’t been wonderful all weekend, to be honest,” he said. “It’s not COVID. I just suffer with a sore throat and eyes and see that doesn’t help.

“I have a lot of things, my sleep and all, and my energy levels are probably the worst I’ve had in a long time.

“Definitely not my peak this weekend. I was very happy to even hit the 3rd quarter and make the circle I did with the way this weekend has gone so far. I was very surprised by it. It’s it just makes me feel good. “

Norris admitted that the FIA ​​video, which he viewed when calling on a separate dangerous release incident involving Lance Stroll, showed that he had violated the track limit.

“I mean, it was as simple as it actually looked,” he said. “I think the only thing that was off the board looked like I was on the track, but with the outboard boat engines from the FIA ​​I was clearly off the track. So simple.

“I think on this corner it’s so hard, it’s that you have a gravel drain and you have about 10cm of track that you can’t use in front of the gravel.

“And in some cases it is much easier to just say that gravel is the limit, and everyone goes up to the gravel.

“And if you leave, there’s already a penalty. But I don’t know, it’s been the rule all season, the white line is the limit, so I just didn’t follow it.”

Norris ’progress with the latest McLaren update package was not helped by the fact that he lost most of Friday’s FP2 session after damaging the car while driving through curbs, forcing the team to create a spare chassis for Saturday.

While he missed long-term preparation for the race, he insisted that his qualifying session was not disrupted by lost mileage.

“I don’t want to use that as an excuse for anything,” he said when asked by Autosport what impact the missed session had.

“I think the only thing that hurts me the most is tomorrow’s long runs, just getting higher fuel, especially at this temperature and so on, every training you can do to save tires and drive and maintain them and maintain temperature, all this is not easy to learn on the go during the race.

“Of course, I already have a good idea of ​​what I need to do.

“I wouldn’t say it hurt in qualifying, more for tomorrow, maybe just a couple of steps behind, but nothing that until the middle of the race, hopefully I won’t be able to win back.”

With Norris absent in the 3rd quarter, his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo took a solid ninth place, putting their qualifying score for the season 5-1.

“I think we’re still learning about new bits,” the Australian said. “With updates and new bits, it’s not always as easy as just fixing them and sending the machine.

“I think if you put them on, you also need to figure out how well to balance the machine with that. So I think we’re still trying to find a better balance with the new bits.

“So I’m still not sure if we really want to maximize their true performance, but we’re still going through a training phase and I think getting into the 3rd quarter was good. But we’re still obviously trying to chase after lap time.” .