McLaren and Lando Norris are putting the pressure on Max Verstappen! With the Englishman’s pole position ahead of his Australian teammate Oscar Piastri, far ahead of the Dutchman, seventh on the starting grid for the Monza GP, the British team wants to reduce the gap on Red Bull in both championships.
A week after his demonstration on the land of the triple reigning world champion, Norris, although dominated by the Mercedes during the tests, put in another layer on Saturday by dominating the qualifications far ahead of Verstappen.
“I’m very pleased. We seemed to be on the same level as the others so I was expecting a tough qualifying session. Taking pole and the top two places wasn’t really what the team was expecting,” said the 24-year-old Englishman.
Unlike Zandvoort last Sunday, he will not have his great rival at his side but rather his teammate Piastri, which will allow him to approach a race start more calmly, which he tends to miss when he sets off in the lead.
Norris has a golden opportunity to get closer to Verstappen, who is 70 points ahead of him in the drivers’ standings, and he is well aware of this: “Of course, it’s a great opportunity to reduce the gap and we will have to make the most of it. But I think he (Verstappen) will be more competitive” on Sunday, he explained.
McLaren, which is only 30 points behind Red Bull in the constructors’ hierarchy, also has a chance to overtake the Austrian team, whose cars will only start in seventh and eighth positions.
In addition, Red Bull will have in front of it the two Mercedes and the two Ferraris supported by an entire people on the mythical Italian circuit, which will make its task even more complicated.
– “Something is wrong” –
“Clearly, something is wrong with the car and we are trying to clarify that. First, we need to understand the problem and how we can fix it, before implementing a solution,” explained Christian Horner, the boss of the Austrian team.
The Silver Arrows, who struggled last weekend in the Netherlands, found their form again in Italy by dominating the tests and taking third and sixth place on the grid thanks to the British George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.
“I didn’t feel good in the car in Q1 and Q2 so I’m happy to take third in Q3. We found out which set-up wasn’t right at Zandvoort and the car was more fun to drive here. We got our full potential back,” Russell said.
The Scuderia is also in the running and hopes to repeat its superb race performance in the Netherlands. With Monaco’s Charles Leclerc and Spaniard Carlos Sainz in fourth and fifth places on the grid, it has a card to play in Monza, where it has not won since 2019.
“We’re not fast enough, I’m frustrated. We couldn’t have expected better. I’m very disappointed, but that’s how it is. Despite the developments made this weekend, it’s still not enough to catch the McLarens, lamented Leclerc. But we’ll still have our card to play” on Sunday.
Alpine, which has been struggling since the start of the weekend, limited the damage by managing to qualify its two cars in Q2, where the French Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon could however only do better than 14th and 15th.
“It was a complicated session, we can’t get the soft tyres to work this weekend, it’s really strange, even if it’s still better than last year… We shouldn’t be in these conditions (Sunday) so we’ll see what we can do,” said Gasly.
nb/cyj
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