Hungarian GP: Norris expecting a ‘difficult’ race with Piastri and Verstappen behind
Mogyorod (Hungary): Pole-sitter Lando Norris is expecting a “difficult” race with teammate Oscar Piastri and championship leader Max Verstappen will start behind him at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Norris said one-two in the grid gives them a good ground to register wins and score big points in the race ahead of Verstappen.
However, he dismissed arguments that it was critical to leave a legacy after narrowly losing out on victories in Imola, Canada, Spain, Austria, and the UK.
“Every single qualifying is important and every single race is important. It’s not all of a sudden I need to do it and prove my point – I don’t. We have done the best we could in every race. We have shown great pace and opportunities. I know we have missed out on some and we don’t need to go back into all that stuff.”
Hungary is the closest they have been thus far. In practice on Friday, in the last session on Saturday before qualifying, and once again in the second session of a challenging wet-dry qualifying sequence before securing pole position, Norris was the quickest.
Norris had only one set of new tyres for the final session while his rivals had two but he still managed to take pole.
He was 0.328 seconds quicker than Verstappen. But after Piastri and Verstappen had used their second set of new tyres, Piastri closed to within 0.022secs and Verstappen 0.046secs.
It was McLaren’s first one-two on the grid since the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix, when Lewis Hamilton led Jenson Button.
Norris said he is expecting a close race on Sunday. “It would be nice to have a nice Turn One and see what happens from there, but I am not expecting it. I am expecting a difficult race with Oscar and Max behind.
“Everyone is important. Every time, we try to maximise every place, every point and the more we can try and get back on Max, and the more the team can get on Red Bull in the constructors’ (championship) the better.
“(There is) no point or emphasis on trying to beat a particular someone or something. It’s just go out and do what we do because we’re doing a good job.”
Norris said Red Bull was “as quick” as McLaren. He also mentioned that they had demonstrated the fastest race speed on Friday during practice, when the weather was more like what was predicted to return for the race.
“They’ll still be challenging us a lot,” said Norris.
