MONZA, Italy — Lando Norris expects Max Verstappen to quickly fight back through the order at the Italian Grand Prix, with McLaren set to discuss team orders ahead of the race.
Norris claimed a second straight pole position while Verstappen, who leads the championship by 70 points, could only qualify seventh.
Sunday’s race appears to be a great chance for Norris to take a chunk out of that gap.
“For sure, it’s a good opportunity,” Norris said on that prospect, before offering a more pessimistic outlook. “I expect him to cut through and be behind us quite quickly, their race pace looked very strong on Friday, they were on the better side of the [tyre] graining and the degradation.
“I expect them to be a bit more hopeful tomorrow. For some reason they didn’t seem to take those steps forward through qualifying. He still seemed quick, even in Q2 he was right there and ended up quicker than me even on a used tyre.
“Even his gap to [Sergio] Perez wasn’t as big as what it normally is so I don’t know if he struggled more with something or didn’t put good enough laps in. It’ll be for a reason I’m sure and we need to try and make the most of that.”
Norris will line up in front of McLaren teammate Piastri.
Piastri won the Hungarian Grand Prix in July when McLaren asked Norris to move over and let him by, due to the way their respective strategies had played out during the race.
Implementing team orders the other way around seems logical now the team has the fastest car and Norris has a chance to inflict some damage on the Red Bull driver.
When asked by ESPN if the team had discussed team orders or if they were free to race, Norris laughed and said: “That’s our Sunday morning meeting! Little bits have been discussed already, but at the minute, it’s free to race like it always is.”
Piastri, who was sat next to him in the press conference, then followed up: “Yeah, we’ve discussed it a bit already and we’ll discuss it tomorrow, I’m sure. Yeah. Don’t really have any more to add.”
Verstappen did not share Norris’ view of his Friday pace, taking a pessimistic view about his chances of battling back into victory contention.
“Probably not, no, you cannot win when you’re too slow,” he said. |The long runs, they might look good on paper, but it didn’t really feel like that personally. The problem is that when you don’t have a balanced car, of course, in the race that is quite painful on tyres also.
“So, let’s see. I mean, maybe with how the car is at the moment it might be a little bit better for the race. But we’re also starting in the back of, let’s say, the top group. So, we just have to wait and see what happens in front of us. There are a few unknowns with the grading, actually, as well. We’ll find out tomorrow.:
Asked whether his mindset was to score as many points as he can, he replied back: “Naturally. Yeah. As much as we can.”
Source: www.espn.com