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Norris sends 'Max is not far behind' warning despite McLaren utter domination in FP2

19:48, 27 Jun

Updated: 19:50, 27 Jun

byTobia Elia

Lando Norris’s thoughts at the end of FP2 at the Austrian GP, with the Brit finishing the session with the fastest time of the day ahead of his teammate and Max Verstappen.

It was already well known that Lando Norris had a special connection with the Red Bull Ring, and even today, despite running one less session after lending his MCL39 to young Alex Dunne, he managed to put together some truly impressive lap times.

The Brit finished FP2 with an excellent 1:04.580, a tenth and a half ahead of teammate Oscar Piastri and a full three tenths faster than Max Verstappen, further proof of McLaren's dominance even at Spielberg.

Sharing his thoughts with the media at the end of the day, Norris said: ''I've always enjoyed this place. I think the car felt good from the off. Alex gave good feedback this morning after FP1 and he was on the pace straight away. It was good to see. I think they moved the car in the right direction for FP2''.

''We just need to understand if we want more of that tomorrow or a little bit less or somewhere in the middle. So yeah, good steps in the right direction, but still a little bit more to come, hopefully''.

''I think as a team, we seemed a bit more competitive. I think we definitely didn't look that good this morning. So I think we did move things in the right direction. I think as always, where we are very quick and FP2 at times, we've showed a bit more pace than some of the others''.

Lando Norris

'Max is not far behind'

''So I certainly think they're going to catch up'', Lando added. ''Max is not far behind and they normally improve a lot into Saturday. So, you know, I expect a good day tomorrow and I'm sure we'll improve on some things but it's not as easy as maybe it looked today.

''I think this is still going to be tight tomorrow. It always is. There's no reason for it not to be and we'll work hard to make it as big of a gap as possible''.

Speaking about the long runs, Norris finally added: ''I think that's where I was probably a little bit behind, more so than the single kind of push laps. It's just catching up with knowing how much to push, where and when and things like that. There's almost more about the finer details in the high field than it is in the lower field''.

''The lower field is more where you're natural, you're just pushing it to the limit and it's easier to kind of maybe find that than the high field. It's not about pushing it to the limit. You know, it's about understanding every part of a corner, how much to push the braking, how much to not push the tires and all these things. So yeah, considering it didn't do a few one, I think in a happy place''.