Lando Norris admits he was “pushing too hard” on his way to a dominant victory for McLaren in the Singapore GP.
His advantage peaked at 29.1 seconds, which would have comfortably allowed him to pit and go for fastest lap had he needed to, before he allowed it to drop down again over the closing laps.
Norris is now 52 points behind Verstappen in the World Championship standings.
“I was flat out,” he said. “I was probably pushing a bit too hard. It was definitely not like I was cruising.
“I was pushing to open up a gap, and at one point I wanted to try and open up a pit window to give myself an opportunity to maybe box at the end of the race for quickest lap if I needed to try and achieve that. Daniel [Ricciardo] stole that away from me at the end of the race.
“So, yeah, a tough one, but it wasn’t easy. The car was not easy to drive, especially on the hard tyres. I struggled a lot more than what I did on the medium.
“And especially just with the traffic and things, it was a bit harder to manage the second half of the stint compared to the first, but I was pushing. Let me tell you, I was definitely pushing.
“Probably too much, hence the mistakes I was making, or the two mistakes I made with the wall, but otherwise things were going well.”
Norris said that the brushes with the wall didn’t affect the performance of his car: “I don’t think so. I mean, the team said that there was something with the front wing, maybe being a little bit off.
“I hit the front wing against the barrier, so it might have tweaked it a touch, but I don’t think probably much to change it, but hard to know.
“On these cars, as soon as you tweak something a tiny bit, it can have quite a big impact, but nothing that I was probably feeling.
“I was pushing, but also it was just as I was catching up to the dirty air from the cars ahead, whether they were 3-4 seconds ahead. It changes from the past 20 laps that I had.
“You have a little bit less grip, a little bit less downforce. Tyres are going away a little bit. It just caught me out. So it wasn’t like a lack of concentration or anything. It was just a bit of a surprise to me.
“But I think the car was all good, and the car has been mega weekend. So a big thanks to the team.”
Norris says that the MCL38 continues to have the potential to be quick everywhere, having won three of the four races held since the summer break.
“We’ve not changed anything on the car from here to last weekend or the weekend before,” he said.
“It was just that the car’s been mega for a good amount of time. I’ve not been able to come out on top for quite a few of them when I felt like I had the pace, and I had the ability to do so.
“So some of that is down to being my own fault and not executing things well enough. So I’ve paid the price for not doing a good enough job at times. But when I lead after Turn 1, and things are a bit more straightforward, then we can have a day like today.”
