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Lando Norris said his victory in the Monaco Grand Prix was an “incredible” feeling, but that he was “more emotional” about taking pole position the day before.
Norris drove a perfectly controlled race to win Monaco from the front, while the new rule mandating drivers use three sets of tyres introduced extra jeopardy but made no difference to the result.
But, for Norris, the fact that he had been able to end a difficult run of qualifying results, and perhaps begin to turn a corner in the struggles he has been having with the McLaren this year, had potentially deeper meaning.
Norris’ pole in Monaco was his second of the year and his first since he won the season-opening race in Australia from the front of the grid. In the meantime, team-mate Oscar Piastri had taken three poles and four wins and seemed to be establishing himself as the championship favourite.
But Norris’ pole-then-win in Monaco, combined with Piastri’s struggles to third in both qualifying and race, cuts the Australian’s lead to just three points, and also increases Norris’ advantage over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, fourth in Monaco, to 22 points.
“Today is incredible, but I was more emotional yesterday than I was today,” Norris said. “That’s how much yesterday meant to me, to kind of get my groove back in qualifying, because it’s something I’ve just had my whole life.
“It’s just always been good, until this year. And I’ve had to work hard to try and get it back. For no other reason apart from a couple of things that I’ve clearly struggled with and also just having tough competition.”
Norris has found this year’s McLaren car difficult to drive on the limit, not providing him the front-end bite or feedback he requires to be fast.
He and his engineers have been working on this hard over the past few weeks. So to be the fastest man around one of the most demanding tracks on the calendar, where precision is more important than anywhere else, meant a lot.
“Yesterday gave me confidence,” Norris said. “Today… yeah, nothing new in the sense of I’ve had confidence in every Sunday we’ve had this year. I’ve not needed the confidence on Sundays, but yesterday was a bigger day for me.
“I was more proud of yesterday than I almost was of today. Not just because a pole in Monaco sets up a win, but the accomplishment of doing it, no matter what the track would have been, was something I’m more proud about.
“So yeah, a good weekend for me, not just in terms of the result but personally, to kind of give myself that momentum, that boost, definitely makes me feel better going into Barcelona next week.”
Both he and McLaren team boss Andrea Stella, though, were reluctant to call this a definitive breakthrough.
After qualifying, Norris said it was “definitely a step in the right direction”.
After the race, Stella said: “Lando deserves to be praised for a very, very well-managed and executed weekend. And I think this is just the start of many more coming in the future.
“I don’t want to think about a turning point. The journey that we are going through with Lando is the counterpart of a journey that we are going through with Oscar.
“They are simply different in terms of what we are doing, because the two drivers are in different phases, or were in different phases, and because of the characteristics and the opportunities to work on.
“This is a journey that is not changed by one stage of the journey. Certainly, this one can help a lot with the consolidation of the work that we have done.
“It shows that when you put together and you pull off good work, and you believe in this work, then you see the results.
“So I think this can cement what we have done so far, but for me we are nowhere near at the final destination.”
Piastri, as befits a man of such coolness, was keeping it all in perspective.
“The margins are so fine, and if this is a bad weekend, it’s not going too badly at all,” he said.
Verstappen and Red Bull tried what they could in the race. They left their final stop to the last lap. It put them in the lead, from fourth place, after Norris, Leclerc and Piastri had made their final stops.
Had the race been stopped as a result of a big accident – not uncommon in Monaco – it would have meant they grabbed an unlikely victory, because of a rule that allows drivers to change tyres under a red flag but keep position.
But the red flag did not happen, and Verstappen dropped back. Lewis Hamilton should have benefited, but the Ferrari driver lost too much time – in traffic and otherwise – and was not close enough to move up from fifth.
Verstappen, always expecting a difficult weekend in Monaco because of the Red Bull’s traditional struggles in low-speed corners and over bumps and kerbs, said he had “no grip”.
“When we think about the championship,” he said. “I just want to go race by race, of course, some tracks you might be a bit better.”
The Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya this coming weekend should bring Red Bull back into the game more.
“Less low-speed corners, more high-speed,” Verstappen said. “Hopefully, that will suit the car a bit better. It should be, yeah. I’m sure, well, I hope. Because if we’re 0.7 seconds a lap behind in Barcelona, that would not be good.”
A change to the rules, introducing tougher tests on the flexibility of front wings will affect all the teams. But whether it changes the competitive order remains to be seen.
Verstappen said: “People always hope for a big upset, but I honestly don’t think it will change a lot.”
