Lando Norris: "My race was just very difficult today" after the Belgian Grand Prix

Credit: Formula One

Lando Norris climbed from thirteenth on the grid to seventh at the finish, but he wasn't in the mood to celebrate the recovery. "It should have been a lot better today, honestly," he said. "The pace was easily good enough for a potential podium."

McLaren started Norris on hard tyres and stretched his opening stint, gambling that a Safety Car or VSC would let him pit for free. It briefly worked well enough to put him in the actual race lead while the frontrunners cycled through their own stops, but the intervention never came.

When Norris finally boxed on Lap 31, a slow 7.8-second stop dropped him behind both Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto. "We just had a terrible pit stop," he said. "We were unlucky with the VSCs as well."

He was pointed about exactly where he thought the race turned. Spa produced two VSC periods, and Norris believes McLaren stayed out through the one that mattered. "We probably should have taken the VSC," he said. "It would have been a long stint on the medium, but I'm going to save more time by boxing on the VSC than I am going to be by going five laps longer."

He passed Bortoleto late and closed hard on Hadjar, but ran out of laps, crossing the line seventh, 24 seconds behind race winner Kimi Antonelli. "My race was just very difficult today, but the pace was very strong," he said. "So, still some positives, I guess."

Looking to Hungary, Norris was careful not to read too much into one strong pace day. "I'm not going to get ahead of ourselves," he said. "We're still miles off the Mercedes." McLaren has also been running the same specification of car for weeks, he pointed out — that changes at the next round. "Next weekend is the first time we bring some, what's supposed to be a good upgrade to the car," he said. "So, we'll be patient and see if that works."