{"id":117154,"date":"2025-09-05T20:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T20:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/117154\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T20:34:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T20:34:10","slug":"lando-norris-admits-rivals-a-bit-close-for-my-liking-despite-topping-fp2-at-monza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/117154\/","title":{"rendered":"Lando Norris admits rivals \u2018a bit close for my liking\u2019 despite topping FP2 at Monza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lando Norris expressed concerns about the small gap back to his rivals after Friday\u2019s track action at the Italian Grand Prix, with the Briton setting the pace in Free Practice 2 by less than one-tenth from Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.<\/p>\n

While Lewis Hamilton<\/a> headed a Ferrari 1-2 during the day\u2019s opening practice hour<\/a> in front of the Tifosi at Monza, McLaren<\/a> looked in strong form during the second session as Norris<\/a> led the way on a lap of 1m 19.878s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, with Leclerc<\/a> and Sainz<\/a> sandwiched between Norris and the other papaya car of Oscar Piastri<\/a>, the pacesetter admitted after FP2 that he was hoping to extend the gap as the weekend progresses in order to keep the team\u2019s competitors at bay.<\/p>\n

Pushed on whether he was pleased with how his session went, Norris answered: \u201cIsh. Normally by this point we have like a one-second gap on everyone! But at the moment it looks just a bit close for my liking at the minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot bad, I feel like there\u2019s some small things to improve for us to still be P1. I thought it was good that we improved some stuff from FP1 to FP2. It\u2019s just a bit close, so I just need to try and make the gap a bit bigger so a little bit more comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of how the car felt on the soft tyre when trying to extract performance, the 25-year-old explained: \u201cStill trickier than what I would like. This is the complete opposite downforce level to Zandvoort, [in] Zandvoort where we were just easily quickest and it felt pretty amazing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s quite the opposite, so [it\u2019s] not a surprise. It\u2019s probably what we were expecting, that kind of thing, but I definitely think we don\u2019t perform quite to the same level in these kind of low downforce conditions as we do when we\u2019re at a high downforce.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe competitors catch up, it looks a bit closer and it makes our life a bit trickier, but I think we\u2019re still in a reasonable place. Some small things to improve, and we\u2019ll be a bit better.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other side of the garage, Piastri returned to action after handing his car over to rookie Alex Dunne during FP1.<\/p>\n

Following a red flag in FP2 owing to Kimi Antonelli\u2019s Mercedes becoming beached in the gravel<\/a>, the Australian found himself under investigation for entering the fast lane of the pit lane before a restart time was confirmed, an incident that he was later handed a reprimand for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we just misjudged the\u2026 we got confused with the messaging from the timing system and went a little bit early, but that\u2019s all,\u201d he said of the incident after the session.<\/p>\n

This aside, the championship leader<\/a> was left satisfied with his running, having commented at the end of Friday: \u201cToday\u2019s been a good day. Obviously not doing FP1, I had a bit of catching up to do in FP2, but I feel like I hit the ground running and the car felt pretty good.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust got the set-up maybe a little bit wrong on the soft [tyre] and the second lap was pretty decent, considering it was a second lap on the tyre. I\u2019m feeling pretty good, I just need to tweak a little bit more tomorrow and find a little bit more pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

When quizzed on whether he was surprised by the fine margins at the top of the timesheets, Piastri responded: \u201cA little bit, yes. I think it was also who was in the mix that was a bit of a surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Williams have looked strong in both sessions now, so let\u2019s see if they\u2019re still there tomorrow but, yeah, I think it\u2019s going to be a close weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris expressed concerns about the small gap back to his rivals after Friday\u2019s track action at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-117154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}