Lando Norris believes that McLaren are “still probably the fourth fastest” car on the grid despite an encouraging day of practice ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
The reigning World Champion finished second quickest on Friday at Spa-Francorchamps<\/a>, just under two tenths slower than Kimi Antonelli in the day’s second, one-hour session.<\/p>\n Norris<\/a> heads into the weekend knowing that he will also serve a 10-place grid drop for Sunday’s race<\/a> due to exceeding the permitted number of power electronic units, but that did not change how he or McLaren approached the sessions.<\/p>\n “We’ve not really changed anything this weekend, no reason for us to expect anything different,” said Norris post-FP2.<\/p>\n “Red Bull don’t normally turn up on Friday, so we’re going to get two [cars in the mix] tomorrow, they’ll be just as quick or if not quicker, so let’s wait and see.<\/p>\n “I think we probably turned up with the Mercedes and the rest of them didn’t, so I think we’re still probably the fourth fastest. Seems like if we can get things right then we might be a little bit closer than we were in Silverstone.”<\/p>\n Norris was delayed slightly at the beginning of FP1 due to car issues, while a hydraulic leak kept McLaren<\/a> team mate Oscar Piastri<\/a> in the garage for 20 minutes at the start of FP2.<\/p>\n Despite showing impressive one-lap pace, Norris was sceptical whether this would remain throughout the weekend, while a red flag at the end of FP2 after a crash for Alpine’s Pierre Gasly limited runs on high fuel.<\/p>\n “I think in terms of pace at the end we seemed good on one lap,” said Norris. “We seemed reasonable but there’s been quite a few times this season where we seem good enough in FP2 and we’re off come Qualifying.<\/p>\n “Today was more just getting through our plan in FP1. Wasn’t the cleanest FP1, we had a few problems and a few issues which didn’t allow us to get out of the garage as quickly as we wanted to.<\/p>\n “Obviously would have been nice to get a few more laps in the end without the red flag to learn some more about high fuel. I think we made some improvements between the sessions and we have to see if we can do another step into FP3.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris believes that McLaren are “still probably the fourth fastest” car on the grid despite an encouraging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-806791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}