Lando Norris conceded that his retirement from the Canadian Grand Prix put himself and the team “out our misery” but vowed to take the positives following a challenging day for McLaren, which unravelled after both Norris and Oscar Piastri started the race on the intermediate tyres.
With rain having been forecast on Sunday in Montreal, conditions were mixed as the start time neared – and McLaren were amongst a group who opted to bolt on the intermediates to begin with, a decision that quickly proved to be the wrong one.
Norris had made a lightning start to take the lead ahead of the Mercedes cars, but was forced to pit within a couple of laps to switch to slick tyres. This dropped him down the order, and his recovery drive was also hindered when he had to pit for a second time over reliability concerns.
Just as he was again starting to make ground, the Briton had to retire after reporting a possible gearbox issue, marking the end of a tricky outing at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Reflecting back on the events of Sunday, Norris explained of that early tyre choice: “It was just, if the rain shifted one per cent more, I think [that] would’ve suited me nicely. It didn’t, and it went maybe one per cent the other way and it’s tough to know these kind of things.
“Obviously it was not a bad decision for Lap 1, like it worked out in a way, but at the same time… Well it was a wrong decision, so we have to accept that and learn what we can use with the information we had to make a better decision next time.
“But I also pushed for it myself quite a bit, so we take it on the chin and we tried to maximise the race after that, but we had some problems and we had a failure in the end which put us out so, yeah, put us out our misery in a way.”
Despite the difficulties of the day, Norris was left feeling optimistic about McLaren’s performance after the weekend, particularly in light of the fact that he was able to take the fight to the Mercedes cars early on.
“Positive,” Norris said when asked to share his thoughts on how the weekend had panned out overall. “It’s hard to just look at positives now, but I was positive. The car was performing well.
“It still felt like a horrible car to drive at times, today mainly in these cold conditions, but I’m sure it’s probably similar for everyone. We still have to take the positives and there were plenty of them – we were in a fight with the Mercedes.
“We were the one giving them a good battle – no one else could, so we have to take those good things away with us, learn what we can improve for next time, and there’s plenty of those things so I’m still excited for the future.”
