Norris vows his pace ‘was easily good enough’ to reach the podium in Belgian Grand Prix

Lando Norris was left to rue a pit stop mistake that cost him a shot at challenging for a podium at the Belgian Grand Prix, with the Briton insisting that McLaren’s pace was “easily good enough” to fight for a better result.

The reigning World Champion was already on the back foot heading into race day thanks to a 10-place grid penalty for fitting a new power electronics unit, making the achievement of delivering “one of the best laps” he’s ever done in Qualifying bittersweet.

While it was enough to earn him third on the timesheets, he was relegated to start from P13, but quickly began to gain positions in the opening stint. McLaren then hung their chances on a potential late Safety Car that never materialised and Norris became the last driver to pit, with his stop lasting a frustrating 7.8s.

“It should have been a lot better today, honestly,” he said after settling for P7. “The pace was easily good enough for a potential podium. I mean, we just had a terrible pit stop. We were unlucky with the VSCs as well.

“We probably should’ve taken the [stop under the] VSC. It would have been a long stint on the medium, but… I’m going to save more time by boxing under the VSC than I’m going to be by going five laps longer. My life was just very difficult today, but the pace was very strong, so still some positives, I guess.”

Despite admitting that there were some encouraging signs from their performance, Norris doesn’t believe that it represented any major improvement for the team, especially as both he and Oscar Piastri finished behind drivers from Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

Asked whether they can take the improvements into the next part of the double header in Hungary, Norris replied: “It’s a different track, so we definitely shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. We’re still miles off comparing to the Mercedes – still half a second off yesterday [in Qualifying].

“We’ve not changed anything on the car either, so we’ve not brought upgrades. Next weekend is the first time we’ll bring hopefully a good upgrade to the car. We’ll see if that works properly.”

Piastri similarly questioned what could have been after he made contact with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc whilst trying to improve to the podium positions, with the subsequent damage leaving him vulnerable to a later pass by Lewis Hamilton.

“It was certainly not a straightforward race,” he concluded. “I felt like our pace was really good – especially at the beginning of the stints it looked strong. Obviously after the damage with Leclerc that made things definitely more difficult.

“I struggled a lot for the rest of that stint. We were able to compensate a little bit for the second stint and it looked a bit better again. Our race definitely was a little bit more difficult than it needed to be from that point on.

“We definitely need a bit more, for sure. We feel like we’re just that one step behind, we’re always trying to hang on to the cars ahead. It’s not the easiest position to be in, but hopefully the upgrades we can bring will help us with that.”