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A demoralized Lando Norris shared a pessimistic outlook for the 2023 F1 Italian GP as he expects to get held up by Alex Albon in his Williams. The McLaren driver will start the race in P9 and revealed that the qualifying was in line with the expectations from the weekend.
Lando Norris will start the race alongside Fernando Alonso and behind Lewis Hamilton. He was also out-qualified by teammate Oscar Piastri who will start the race in P7. Talking about his outlook for the race, Norris was a bit pessimistic about what the race holds for McLaren.
According to the driver, Williams' straight-line speed will make it very hard for him to overtake and that could ultimately dictate how the race pans out. The driver told Sky Sports:
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"I don't think we can really go forward. We're too slow on the straights to overtake. We basically cut everything off the wing that we could, we just have an inefficient car and that doesn't allow us to race very well.
"We'll try to get some positions off the line and the first lap, but the Mercedes is always very strong on race pace. The Williams, no matter how quickly we are on the corners, they're too quick for us on the straights."
Lando Norris on where McLaren was lagging behind
When questioned where he felt he lost out, Lando Norris said that it all came down to the overall performance of the car. McLaren has struggled with the low downforce setup and that has been the team's Achilles' heel.
This weakness seems to have shown up again this weekend as the team had an underwhelming result. Talking to Sky Sports, Norris said:
"Just performance really, close as well [with] two-tenths, it's three or four positions higher. I don't think we expected a lot more, but we said it already on Thursday that [it] was gonna be a tough weekend for us with as long straights. We've improved a little bit, but we're still a long, long way down on the others, so it's going to be a tough Sunday."
It will be interesting to see what kind of progress Lando Norris makes during the race. He is going to have Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso for company which would make things very interesting, that's for sure. One thing is for certain though, McLaren might not be fighting for podiums this weekend,
