McLaren’s Lando Norris is preparing for a challenging British Grand Prix on Sunday, anticipating a fierce fight to overtake Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who secured pole position with a strategic low-downforce rear wing setup on his RB21.
Verstappen surprised his rivals by clinching a sensational pole at Silverstone on Saturday, narrowly beating McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Norris by just over a tenth of a second.
The Dutchman’s performance turnaround came after an overnight adjustment to optimize straight-line speed, a move that proved effective in qualifying and is expected to provide an edge in the race, particularly in dry conditions.
For Norris, it raises a significant concern about overtaking opportunities on Silverstone’s long straights.
“It's hard, honestly, to know until you get behind and you have the dirty air and DRS and things like that,” Norris said after Saturday’s qualifying.
“To be honest, at the minute, our DRS speed probably just about matches Max's speed. So, I think it'll be tough because we’ll probably catch him in the high speed, but we just won't really close much when we open the DRS. I think it can be tough, but there's also probably more opportunities than a normal race.”
"Still plenty of opportunities for us"
While Verstappen’s setup may make him more difficult to catch on the straights, Norris remains optimistic that McLaren can challenge across the lap by exploiting other areas of the track.
©RedBull
“Between everyone, we're fast and slow in different places. You look at Red Bull Ring and you say Red Bull Ring is high-speed, but comparing to Silverstone, it's quite medium-speed,” he added.
“Here is definitely high-speed, and it's probably highlighted a few more of our weaknesses. We've performed very well in the slower and medium-speed tracks, some of the higher speed, we’re not bad, but we always seem to lose out to Max and the Red Bull, like Oscar said, in Japan, here, things like that.
“So, clearly things to work on. But we go into the race tomorrow, there's still plenty of opportunity for us.”
Piastri Impressed by Red Bull’s Balance
Norris’ teammate Oscar Piastri echoed the concerns about Red Bull’s straight-line strength, but also expressed surprise that Verstappen’s car retained such strong performance through the high-speed corners of Silverstone despite its lower downforce configuration.
“It's hard to know at the moment,” Piastri said. “For us, what's been impressive is some of the high-speed performance that they can continue with, even with the light downforce. So, let's wait and see tomorrow.
“Of course, I hope that the higher downforce works a bit better in a few areas, but honestly, we really won't know until tomorrow.”
He added that the performance trade-off between downforce levels hasn’t been as predictable as expected, noting that Red Bull continued to find speed in unexpected areas.
“It's also been interesting with other teams, it's not always just been the higher the downforce you have the quicker you are in all the corners. [In] some of the corners we’re still slower than the Red Bull and Max.
Read also: Piastri promises Silverstone thriller: ‘It’s going to be a fun race'“So, it's not that straightforward, but I think it's going to be an interesting thing to see tomorrow.”
With Verstappen looking formidable on the straights and McLaren holding out hope for better cornering performance, the home crowd at Silverstone could be in for a closely-fought and strategically complex battle come race day.
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