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1 – Lando NORRIS (McLaren)
2 – Oscar PIASTRI (McLaren)
3 – Charles LECLERC (Ferrari)
TRACK INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by Davide Valsecchi)
Q: Lando, what a
race. What enormous pressure. How did you handle it? From outside, that was
just epic.
Lando NORRIS: Yeah, it was a tough race. You know, pushing the
whole way through. Tricky, hot, tiring. But the perfect result for us as a
team, a one-two is exactly what we want, and we did it again. So, I'm very
happy. Probably the best comeback after Canada.
Q: What a turnaround.
How did you handle Oscar Piastri in the first 20 laps? At a certain point
when he overtook you just up there in Turn 3, you had a great battle.
LN:
We had a great battle, that's for sure. Yeah, it was a lot of fun for me. A
lot of stress, but a lot of fun. Yes, a nice battle. So well done to Oscar.
Hopefully, it was a nice one for everyone to watch. But inside the car it
was tough, especially when he was in the DRS. The DRS is so big around here,
it's hard to get him out of the gap. But once I did, I could manage things
pretty well. But yeah, he was still quick. So, it was good fun.
Q:
Congratulations. It was a great show.
LN: Thank you.
Q: Oscar,
congratulations. How was it drom inside the car because it was impressive
how you could pressure for all the first 20 laps. It was just something
unbelievable. How was it from inside?
Oscar PIASTRI: Intense. I hope it
was good watching because it was pretty hard work from the car. So yeah, I
tried my absolute best and probably could have done a better job when I just
got ahead momentarily, but yep, it was a good battle. A bit on the edge at
times and probably pushed the limits a bit far. But yeah, it was a good
race. You know, that's what we're here to do, try and race each other and
then try and fight for wins, and that's what we did today. It was close for
me but not quite enough. So, thanks to the team. To have the kind of pace we
did whilst battling each other was very impressive. So, I can't thank the
team enough for the car we've got.
Q: After yesterday and your
Friday, did you expect to be so competitive, to fight Lando all through the
entire race?
OP: Yeah, I mean, I thought it was possible. I think
qualifying yesterday was unfortunate with the yellow flag, and then I felt
like the pace this weekend has been good. So, I think once I could stay in
the DRS, I felt pretty good. Afterwards, once I dropped out after the first
stop, it was tough to make the progress to get back. But yeah, some things
to go over, see if we could have done anything better.
Q:
Congratulations. Lovely show.
OP: Thank you.
Q: Charles, tell me
your feeling after you're back on the podium. I think at the beginning you
wanted to fight for victory, but then the pace was there. What do you think?
How do you rate your weekend?
Charles LECLERC: I rate our weekend as a
team really well. But unfortunately, the pace today was just not enough. In
the first corner I was thinking about going, but Lando closed the door, and
then that left the door open to Oscar. I lost second place there. But
anyway, I think they were too fast for us to stay in second, so third was
the best we could do. I don't regret much of what we've done today. I think
we've done our maximum, just not enough pace.
Q: Tell me about your
Ferrari. The move at Turn 3 was good because behind there was contact.
Probably it was better to stay calm in that corner. And about your Ferrari,
seems that during the weekend you improved a bit, then in the race, in the
first part, you were closer. What's your feeling inside the car?
CL:
Yeah, in the first stint I think I over pushed a little bit at the beginning
trying to follow them, then I degraded a little bit more. But it's part of
the game. I’ve tried, at the end, and it didn't make it today. I think
eventually we need more pace. We've brought some upgrades this weekend and
they definitely helped us to do a step forward, but we need to keep pushing
in that direction in order to close the gap to the McLaren that for now are
too quick.
Q: About the next races, because we are missing a victory
this year. Tell me about the next races.
CL: I'm missing it too. So, I'll
give it all to try and be back on the top step of the podium. Obviously,
this is our main priority. The whole team deserves it, and hopefully it will
be at the next race in Silverstone. We’ll give it all.
PRESS
CONFERENCE
Q: Congratulations, Lando. It was a thrilling victory for
you today. What was the most pleasing aspect of it for you?
LN: Crossing
the line at the end! That was the best bit, but there was plenty of fun
along the way, with Oscar, in the first stint especially. Some close
moments, some good battles. Just a lot of laps of looking in my mirrors out
of Turn 1 and all the way down to Turn 3. Stressful for sure, not the most
comfortable position to be in, but it was a good battle between us. And then
quite a long race from that point onwards because I never had a lovely gap,
and Oscar kept coming at me the next two stints. So, yeah, good fun, but a
tricky race, but well managed.
Q: This was the first time that we've
seen you and Oscar going wheel to wheel for a prolonged period. Did you
learn anything new about him today?
LN: No. I mean, we just had some good
battles, and we've had a couple in the past. Granted, they probably didn't
last as long as they did today, but no, I think we both knew what to expect
from each other. We both want to race hard and race fair. It goes both ways,
and of course, kind of have to put Montreal behind us and behind me for
sure. It's something I wish never happened, but it was nice that we could go
out and have a good battle and push things to the limits. There were still
some close moments, but nothing that would make Andrea or the pit wall sweat
too much.
Q: The pace today, Lando, was frenetic. You were twenty
seconds ahead of Charles in third place. Were you pushing hard in all three
stints?
LN: Yeah! Especially stint one. I think we got, like, ten laps
here, and the gap was already, like, five seconds. And I knew what our pit
stop window was going to be or was planning to be. And I was like, there's
no chance we're going make it to the pit stop here. Oscar was pushing too,
and I think we knew quite quickly that we weren't racing the Ferraris behind
with a quick race car, and it was kind of eyes forward. But the first stint
was difficult just because I couldn't get my battery up, and it was quite a
strategic part of the race. And I was just always vulnerable for those
reasons. But as soon as I did the pit stop, I could get the battery back up
for the first time, and then I could be a little bit more comfortable.
Q: This is a great springboard for you ahead of your home race at
Silverstone next weekend. Are you expecting the updated parts on the McLaren
to perform strongly through Silverstone's fast sweeps?
LN: I mean, our
strengths here were the high speed, so I want to hope it's a similar case
next weekend, but it's still a very different track. It's a different
layout. We're not going to take anything for granted. But the upgrades were
working as they should have done today, and that's certainly a good sign. So
I think we give a lot of credit to everyone back in MTC and to the whole
team for giving us another very, very good car, upgrades that we just can
put on – they've been a little while and we've been pushing with things –
but we put them on the car, and they worked as they should. So we're
satisfied. The team is satisfied and excited for next weekend. The best race
weekend of the year, in my opinion. To have my own grandstand, to have the
British fans for McLaren and for myself is something I'm looking forward to
for sure.
Q: Alright. And very well done today. Thank you, Lando.
Oscar, let's come to you now. Can we start by talking about that battle with
Lando, what you learned about him, how close it was?
OP: I mean, again,
there have been a few battles in the past, not just last week, but last year
and the year before. So, I think we both knew what to expect. It was a tough
battle. It was close at some points, probably pushing the limits a bit much
from my side once or twice. But we're fighting for race wins in Formula 1.
It's going to be pretty tough work and pretty hard. I thought it was an
entertaining race. After the first stop, maybe we didn't do the right thing
giving Lando some breathing room, but the first 20 laps were pretty intense.
So, it was a good battle.
Q: Why did you pit four laps later than
Lando?
OP: I knew that I was always going to be pitting second in that
scenario. For me, it felt like if I couldn't stay within DRS, then getting
back inside one second was going to be very, very tough. So, I kind of
wanted to go a bit different and give myself some fresher tyres and
hopefully be able to use them at the end of the stint. It didn't really pan
out that way, unfortunately, but that was the thinking at least. We'll go
back and look and see whether that was the right thing to do. In the moment,
I was always going to lose some amount of time by pitting a lap later, so I
kind of went, why not try something a bit different?
Q: It was a
great battle with Lando. Just how crucial was it for you to pass Charles on
the run to turn one?
OP: Yeah. It made a big difference. It meant I could
stay in DRS from the start, and DRS is very powerful here. So that certainly
helped in the battle at the start. That was an important moment of the race,
and then it pretty quickly became clear that it was just going to be a fight
between us two. That was a key moment.
Q: It was a fight between you
two here. Given what you now know about the car, do you think it'll be a
two-horse race at Silverstone next weekend as well?
OP: I hope so, but
you never know. Canada, we kind of thought we'd be good there, and we
weren't. Here, we expected to be good, but probably not as good as we have
been. I think we should be confident that we'll be decent, I think that's
fair to say. But how quick we are, we'll find out next week.
Q:
Alright. Oscar, very well done to you as well. Thank you. Charles, let’s
come to you. Your third podium in four races. What were the key moments for
you this afternoon?
CL: Oh, I did not expect that question. There weren't
very many key moments on my side. Obviously, the start, I wish I had done a
bit of a better job to be completely alongside Lando. Maybe that would have
changed a little bit for three or four laps. I don't think we had the pace
to stay there in front. Basically, from Turn 1 one to the end, it was a very
boring race. I was on my own, just trying to manage quite a few issues that
we had on our side. Let's not call them issues, but we've got to do some
management in the situation we're in at the moment. I won't go into the
detail, but the lift and coast was a little bit frustrating. We paid a bit
of the price for it on the first stint, but then the second and last stint
were a bit more positive, which was good. But there weren't many key moments
apart from the start.
Q: Having put a race distance on the upgrades
this weekend, are you confident that they are a good step forward?
CL:
They are definitely a step forward. Yes. And I think it helped us to be on
the podium today. The team has done an incredible job at pushing to try and
get them as early as possible. I know that they are still pushing extremely
hard to have other upgrades as soon as possible, which I hope will make
another difference and will help us to be a bit closer to McLaren, to Red
Bull in their good days, or to Mercedes even in their good days. So, yeah,
we are pushing hard, and I hope that we see the result as soon as possible.
Q: Are you surprised by the pace of McLaren this afternoon?
CL:
Surprise is probably not the right word. The first stint was poor on our
side, but the second and last stint I thought were reasonable, but I've got
to look. I mean, I was obviously focused on my race, and I didn't see all
the lap times. I saw the gap at the end of the race, and it's not the gap
that you would want to see, but that's unfortunately the gap that we've had,
if not more, since the beginning of the season. For us, we are working a
little bit in relative to the others. And for now, this weekend, it's a step
forward, and I hope that we can do another one as soon as possible.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Lando, you
mentioned Canada and wanting to put that behind you. How perfect a response
has this whole weekend felt? Because you've been P1 every single session.
And to soak all the pressure that Oscar put you under, does it feel like
you've maybe not proved a point, but to yourself even just to bounce back
like this?
LN: I mean, it's certainly, yeah, it's fulfilling for me. It
gives me good confidence. I don't need to prove any points or prove anything
to anyone, honestly. I like to prove things to myself, probably more than
anything. So certainly, it's been a good clean weekend from FP2 onwards.
Felt very comfortable and very on top of the car and performed exactly as I
want to and as I need to. I just had a clean weekend. That's what I had.
It's not that I've not been able to do it before and the pace has always
been there at certain points. It's just there's been some different reasons
for different things. But certainly, coming in today and yesterday to do the
job that I did, I'm pretty happy with. But it doesn't come easily. It
doesn't come just because I've turned up this weekend and things are better.
I'm working a lot. I'm doing a lot more work than I used to away from the
track with the team, on the simulator, with my own team, trying to improve
everything that I can, both on and off the track. I think it's more a
positive thing to see a lot of those things paying off immediately. Good
step in the right direction. Still need more, so want more. So, we'll keep
working.
Q: (Leonid Kliuev – Grande Premio Brazil). Question for Oscar.
Do you think the team should have insisted on pitting you right after Lando
and give you a chance to win?
OP: I don't know yet. We'll go back and
look through it. Like I said before, I think I was always going to lose time
by pitting second. I had past experience of being just stuck outside DRS,
and that was a pretty painful place to be in the past. So, I didn't really
want to be there again. In the moment, I thought that giving myself a bit
more work to do but with better tyres was going to be an interesting option.
With hindsight, yeah, maybe you can say it wasn't the right call, but
there's a lot of things you can say in hindsight.
Q: (Lawrence
Edmondson – ESPN) Another question for Oscar. The team described that move
at Turn 4 as “too marginal” over the team radio. Sorry if you've already
gone through this, but what was your interpretation of that? And Andrea said
you apologised as soon as you crossed the line or at least acknowledged as
soon as you crossed the line that perhaps it was a step too far in
aggression.
OP: Yeah. I mean, I thought it was a fair comment. Locking up
and missing the back of your team-mate by not a lot is certainly pushing the
boundaries. Even if I hadn't been told anything, I didn't think it was a
wise decision to try that one again. So, yeah, a fair comment and nothing
more than that.
Q: (Zsolt Godina – F1Vilag.hu) Charles, on Friday,
you seemed to struggle quite a bit with the pace, but for Saturday your pace
improved quite a lot. Was that the result of some setup changes or what
happened?
CL: Yeah. We changed quite a lot of things on the car.
Obviously, I missed FP1, so FP2 was all about trying to understand where we
were. Then for FP3, we did a big change in order to re-centre ourselves. I
think we did a really good job from Friday to Saturday, only with one
session to be able to re-centre ourselves. As soon as I got into the car in
FP3, the car was feeling a lot better. I didn't do the long runs with the
setup of today, but there weren't any bad surprises as well. I think we did
a good job by maximising the car potential this weekend.
Q: (Luke
Smith – The Athletic) Another one for Lando. You talk about those
improvements and that work you've been doing. You and Will were having quite
a lot of chatter through the race, and you were asking quite openly, like,
look, I need help in some of these corners. Is that part of that extra work
you've been doing? Because it does seem that you guys are not talking more
on the radio, but at least more about those sort of granular details in
terms of where can I find more pace in particular corners?
LN: It's part
of it. Probably not the precise stuff that I've been working on, but that's
just part of the general improvements we've been trying to make. I think it
was more normal improvements that I've been trying to make. Just things you
need when you're trying to win a race. As much as I like to not have any
radio and just do my own thing and concentrate, when you've got some quick
guys behind you or ahead of you, there's nothing wrong with asking for a bit
of guidance and a bit of help every now and then. I'm just trying to utilise
the guys I've got around me. My engineers, my performance engineers, they're
looking at a lot more data than I can see. Obviously, I'm the one in the
car, but when you've got a guy catching you here and there and there are
some corners where you can improve, then I want to know those things. I
would say that's nothing more than just general improvements but also me
trying to be a bit more accepting of some help sometimes.
Q: (Phil
Duncan – PA) Lando, you spoke about Silverstone there and your own
grandstand and the 140,000 fans. Does that bring any extra pressure? Are you
ready to use that to your advantage to get a second win in as many weeks?
And to Oscar, obviously Silverstone is Lando's home turf. You two guys are
leading the world championship. Are you braced at all for an uneasy or
perhaps hostile reception from the British fans?
LN: I mean, I certainly
hope that part's not going to happen. The British fans are normally very
accepting for all of us and especially for us as McLaren. So I think the
first point should be for all the fans to embrace everyone and to support
everyone. Certainly, for me, I don't think there's any more pressure. Of
course, it's a place I want to win more than anywhere else, but it doesn't
change anything. It just puts a bit more of a smile on my face every morning
when I wake up. It probably distracts me in a good way more than anything.
Now I've got my own grandstand, and I've got more reasoning for different
things. More of a positive distraction, I would say, more than a pressure.
There's pressure in every race. There's pressure to win today, to be on pole
yesterday. I don't think I can put myself under any more pressure. That
doesn't change anything. More just something to look forward to, to enjoy
every day, enjoy every lap, enjoy the experience, because it's still for me
an experience to have my own grandstand, to have so many of my fans there
supporting me, cheering me on. Very excited for it. Kind of want to go there
now, but I could do with a good sleep as well.
OP: I don't think so. A
couple of years ago they were chanting my name in the crowd, so that was
unexpected. I'm not sure I'll quite get that again, which is fair enough. I
feel like the fans in general this year have been a bit nicer to us. We
didn't even have Max Verstappen fans booing us today, so that was a nice
change. They've always been very accepting of me. Obviously, I race for a
British team, and I think they're big fans of everything papaya and that
includes both of us. I'm expecting there to be a lot more Lando fans than me
fans, but that's fair. It's his home race as well, so I think it'll be fine.
Q: (Axelle Valliére – MotorsInside.com) Question for all three. During
the race, we still saw a lot of times cancelled because of track limits.
However, this morning we know now the track will be on the calendar for many
years. So, what do you think? Maybe the track is not adapted for actual F1?
LN: I'm very surprised that there were track limits. Maybe Turn 3. Where? I
think we just went off track. When we made a mistake, we locked up. The
thing is we get a penalty for making a mistake. You get a warning for making
a mistake.
Q: (Axelle Valliére – MotorsInside.com) There were no
penalties today, but there were a lot of times cancelled. Is it a problem?
LN: No.
CL: I don't think it's a problem anymore. I think the changes
that have been made to the track are actually pretty good to stop the
problem that there was before. So, yeah, it's not a problem. Actually, I
think it shouldn’t anyway be a discussion. I don't know if anybody took a
penalty today, but I feel like it's already a big penalty enough, as Lando
was saying. It's enough of a penalty to go off now on a track like this. I
don't think it's a problem.
LN: Yeah. I agree. They've got the gravel in
the main corners where if you go off, you're going to gain time, and you
can't gain time anymore. I went off, and I lost a lot of time. We just get
the warnings now, but only when we lock up and go off. Same as me last year.
I got a five-second penalty for trying to overtake, trying to race in a
race. Makes sense. But those things, I think it's a bit stupid. But no, I
think this track's a lot better than a couple years ago. It was like 200 off
tracks. Now it's, I think, no penalties. |
