Norris makes bleak championship admission after Zandvoort Sprint

Any prejudice that Formula 1 drivers aren’t particularly interested in sprint races can be thrown out after the race in Zandvoort. During the post-race press conference, Lando Norris made it abundantly clear - both verbally and through his body language - that he was hugely disappointed with third place.

Like a sulking child denied dessert, Lando Norris sat on the red couch in the press conference room in the Netherlands. Arms crossed, cap pulled as far down over his face as possible, and a facial expression suggesting his favorite pet had just died.

In his chat with the international media, Norris said he was “happy” with the upgrades McLaren had implemented, but that a structural problem remained unresolved: "I just don't have the pace in general, especially in the slow-speed corners. We're just, we struggle so much compared to the others. So we saw that the whole weekend so far. There's nothing we can do."

When Tom Clarkson, who chairs the FIA press conferences, asked whether there truly was nothing that could be done to change that with qualifying in mind, Norris replied curtly: “No, otherwise we’d have done it already.”

When the follow-up question was whether Norris would be willing to sacrifice some single-lap pace in qualifying to improve the situation for tomorrow, the Brit snapped back: "Is there anything you recommend? It's not like we're not doing that, just you make the car as quick as possible."

The previous Grand Prix in Hungary - like Zandvoort - featured plenty of slow corners. Yet Norris managed to win there: "I think we knew in Budapest we were very good in high-speed corners and we were pretty terrible in slow speed, but we still managed to win. Here, there's a lot more of the very, very slow speed, and more of our problems show. So, no, not a surprise at all. It's exactly what we expected."

In any case, after the first race following the summer break, it’s clear to Norris that a serious title shot is barely feasible with these limitations: "I feel if we still went back to Monaco now, we're going to be as shocking as we were. I think we've clearly progressed a lot, and especially in medium and high speed, which is why we're quick here, why we were so quick in Budapest."

The world champion has accepted that there’s little that can be done about the situation at the moment: "It's just how the car is for the time being. And that's where we still have to focus as a team. We're trying to get everything out of it."

All in all, Norris says: "We just need more if we want to fight for a championship."