Norris can laugh again: 'But racing against Verstappen is not on the cards'

Lando Norris in his improved McLaren had a great qualifying in front of his home crowd in Great Britain. After the Saturday sessions, he was asked how he is looking at the race now that he starts from P2 on Sunday.

The McLaren of Norris and Oscar Piastri has become notably stronger since the previous race weekend in Austria. It was even strong enough at Silverstone to get into the top three with both drivers. In Barcelona, the team was also strong on Saturday, but Sunday was miserable. What are Norris' expectations for the British Grand Prix?

Norris: "We don't talk about Barcelona anymore. Okay, so I think if we look to Austria, I know Austria is a very different circuit to this but Austria, we performed extremely well in qualifying and we managed to back it up a reasonable amount in the race. So I want to be hopeful. I'm not normally hopeful going into a Sunday because of how this year's been and how things normally go at certain tracks come Sunday."

The Mclaren driver concludes, "I've got some reasons to believe and some hope after our pace today and how we were on Friday and sometimes then we can have a good race tomorrow, probably not enough to race this guy [Max Verstappen], but enough to put up a fight for hopefully a top five."