![\"Yuki](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/SI202509210282.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Red Bull Formula 1 car was \u201cunbelievably fast\u201d in some parts of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, declared Lando Norris, after not only watching Max Verstappen dominate in Baku but failing to pass Yuki Tsunoda for sixth late in the race.<\/p>\n
McLaren\u2019s awful Baku weekend continued from its messy qualifying session into an even worse race in which Norris finished where he qualified in seventh and championship leader Oscar Piastri crashed out on the first lap.<\/p>\n
Verstappen\u2019s win was his and Red Bull\u2019s second in a row, the first time that’s happened since June of last year, and brings him to within 44 points of Norris for second in the drivers\u2019 championship and 69 off leader Piastri with seven rounds left.<\/p>\n
Asked by The Race about whether his unproductive race was just a consequence of being stuck in a DRS train mid-pack, Norris replied that McLaren had its problems but Red Bull was simply much faster.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI don\u2019t think we were bad but I could barely keep up with Tsunoda and there were parts of the track where the Red Bull was just unbelievably fast,\u201d said Norris.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no chance to keep up with him in some areas of the track.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe clearly struggled a little bit this weekend and in this race. The car was difficult to drive, on a bit of a knife edge at times. Easy to either just be too slow, or sometimes you\u2019d kind of feel like you were there and then you\u2019d lock up and something goes wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe car didn\u2019t fill us with a lot of confidence this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Red Bull didn\u2019t win a grand prix between Imola and May and Monza a fortnight ago, but Norris said its decline had been overestimated.<\/p>\n
![\"Max](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/SI202509210399.jpg\")
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\u201cIt\u2019s not often that they\u2019re slow, so people need to stop being so surprised that they\u2019re quick,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMax was winning races already at the beginning of the year. The whole season they\u2019ve been quick and the Red Bull\u2019s been good. They\u2019ve brought some upgrades to Monza, which seemed to have helped them even more.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019m not surprised. We know that they\u2019re an incredibly strong team with one of the best drivers ever in Formula 1. So we expect nothing less. They\u2019re going to make our life difficult I think for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we also know from our side, we struggled a bit here, Monza clearly we were not quick enough. We\u2019ve made improvements but things where the Red Bull has been so good and dominant in the past, they still have and we don\u2019t. Today when I was following the Red Bull there were clearly some areas where they were at another level to us. We need to understand why.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Lando](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/XPB_1374502_HiRes.jpg\")
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Asked by The Race if he felt McLaren\u2019s Baku performance was a one-off, Norris replied: \u201cI don\u2019t think they were big struggles, I think on ultimate pace we were still not bad this weekend. I was still quick in FP1, FP2, FP3 and so forth. If it was a normal qualifying\u2026 I think the tricky conditions, the water, the little bit of rain, going out first, all added up to making it a worse weekend and our position today.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had started second, I think I would have finished second. I don\u2019t think we had the pace of Red Bull, honestly. That was very, very clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think just on the lower-downforce tracks we still seem to struggle. We don\u2019t have the confidence we need. We can be quick, we\u2019re just not able to repeat it as often as we need to and as often as the Red Bull, for example.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had an amazing season, don\u2019t get me wrong, but we clearly have things that are not good enough and that we have to keep working on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri\u2019s messy weekend![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/XPB_1374303_HiRes.jpg\")
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Having already crashed in qualifying, Piastri\u2019s race got worse immediately when he ensured a jump-start penalty, then actually started slowly while trying – too late – to stop his car inching forward, then crashed out trying to make up ground.<\/p>\n
He put that down to \u201cjust ultimately misjudging the grip level\u201d and accepted it was a simple driving error.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably a little bit from dirty air, but I know better than that and to expect the lack of grip,\u201d said Piastri. \u201cI\u2019m certainly not blaming it on anything else. It was two simple errors on my behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n
The championship leader took some comfort from the errors being rare, insisting there was nothing in his mindset or the car\u2019s behaviour that contributed to them and that this made it easier to move on from.<\/p>\n
![\"Oscar](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2236546220.jpg\")
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\u201cObviously we\u2019re not going to feel amazing after a weekend like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut ultimately I felt like the pace has still been good this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s rare that I have so many execution errors so I\u2019m very much focused on putting that behind me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would be much more concerned if these errors were because I was trying to make up time or do things like that. I think they are obviously costly errors but are things that can be very, very easily rectified.”<\/p>\n
Verstappen a title threat?![\"Max](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/SI202509210443.jpg\")
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![\"Max](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/SI202509210504.jpg\")
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