Lando Norris finished in seventh at the 2026 F1 Belgian GP, but the McLaren driver believes he could’ve finished on the podium with better luck with the timing of the several Virtual Safety Car’s and a cleaner pit stop from his crew.
Norris: “Incredible pace” was thwarted by unlucky timing with the VSCs and a slow pit stop
The reigning world champion qualified third on the grid, but started the race from 13th place following a 10-place grid drop for exceeding his allocation of power unit components for the season, with the team opting to fit a new battery and a new spec Mercedes engine on the #1 car ahead of the weekend in Belgium.
Despite his lowly grid position, Norris was making significant strides early on, after starting on the hard tyres – looking to go long and have an offset on the cars around him – but that strategy was quickly thwarted by a series of Virtual Safety Car appearances that massively benefitted the medium tyre starters.
As the cars around him could get off the yellow-marked tyres and fit the hards to the end, Norris had to hang it out in the hope of another occurence of the VSC, which ultimately didn’t come – and meant he had to make his pit under green flag conditions on lap 30, losing over 16 seconds in the process:
“I think the pace was incredible,” Norris said in the print media pen. “Honestly, I think the pace was good enough for us to be at the podium today. Of course, made tougher by the fact that I had to start from 13th.
“The VSCs were also just badly timed for us, [and] they were perfectly benefitting the [medium] runners, and were a bit too early for me. That’s something we’ll review and see if we could have boxed under VSC. I mean, I lost 10 seconds because of that.”
Norris: Slow McLaren pit stop compounded “incredibly tough” 2026 F1 Belgian GP
On top of not being able to take advantage of the VSC appearances at the 2026 Belgian GP, Norris was left even further back by McLaren’s slow pit stop, as the left-rear tyre took longer than expected to come off and resulted in a painfully slow, 7.8s pit stop, which he believes only compounded what proved to be a total of “16 seconds” lost, which, if subtracted from his race time, would indeed have put him on the podium, just over three seconds clear of actual third place finisher Max Verstappen, instead of seventh and behind the other Red Bull of Isack Hadjar:
“And I lost another five or six, or something in the pit stop. So, 16 seconds that we just add onto my race time. It just makes my life incredibly tough. And the fact that I started 13th.
“I don’t think we could have made my race or we could have made our race any more difficult today. I think the pace was good enough for a podium – or even to win. So, it’s a shame not to win.”
Mercedes lack of relative race pace left Norris “a little bit” surprised in 2026 F1 Belgian GP
After an incredibly dominant qualifying performance from Kimi Antonelli on Saturday at the 2026 F1 Belgian GP – putting over three tenths to the nearest rival – the race proved to be a completely different story for the German team, as the young Italian had to fight to get past Charles Leclerc and win the race.
When asked if this contrast between Mercedes’ relative pace to the rest of the field in qualifying versus the race, Norris said he wasn’t overly surprised by it, explaining it’s been the case for the last few races already:
“I mean, it’s been a little bit like that all year to be honest,” he said of Mercedes’ less-dominant race pace compared to qualifying. “They’ve always been a little step better in quali compared to the race. There have been some races where they’re just completely dominant, [but] they’ve not been completely dominant, I would say, over the last 3, 4, or 5 weekends.
“Everyone seems to have caught up a little bit. And this is also a track where it was a little bit about the straights and straight line mode, which is also where they have a good advantage over us. Yeah, maybe a little bit surprised.
“They weren’t much stronger, [but] they were still won the race. So, it’s not like they had a bad weekend.“
McLaren “doesn’t know why” they were so quick in Spa
Even though they had a very positive weekend, Norris admitted McLaren isn’t quite sure why it’s so fast – and even went as far as saying the team would be “shockingly slow” if it went to Silverstone again, making it clear there needs to be a thorough review of their car going forward in order to understand its performance profile better:
“We were certainly closer [to Mercedes] today than we were expecting. That’s a good sign.
“But we don’t know why. If we go back to Silverstone now, we’re still going to be shockingly slow and struggle with the car. So, we have to understand why this track suits us so much better.
“And the strategy, of course, we’ll review.”
