By Alan Baldwin
(Reuters) – Lando Norris said his time will come this season after the McLaren driver finished runner-up to Red Bull’s dominant Formula One champion Max Verstappen for the second race in a row.
The Briton was a distant second to the Dutchman in Hungary on Sunday after the same result at Silverstone two weeks earlier.
While Red Bull have won 12 in a row, and 21 of the last 22 races, it was the first time Norris had stood on the podium twice in succession.
“If Max retires, or something, then maybe,” he said when asked about a possible breakthrough first win. “At the minute, the guys (Red Bull) are too quick. Unless they make mistakes or something happens.
“I think we’re very happy with the progress we’ve made, to go from where we were four, five races ago, struggling to get out of Q1 (the first phase of qualifying) sometimes, to fighting for poles and fighting for podiums.
“We’ll take it for now, and our time will come later on in the year.”
Red Bull are already turning their focus to next year’s car with both titles as good as won. Other than circuit-specific items, they have no more major upgrades scheduled after Hungary’s.
Verstappen is 110 points clear of his own team mate Sergio Perez after 11 races while Red Bull are 229 ahead of Mercedes in the constructors’ standings.
Mercedes-powered McLaren, the sport’s second most successful team after Ferrari in terms of wins, have made a remarkable leap in performance after starting the season with no points from the first two races and a slow car.
“Everything we’re learning this season applies to next season, so we’re head down, we’re full throttle, we have more developments coming,” said McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown. “We’ll have some big stuff later in the year.”
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said his team still had the second quickest car and Norris agreed despite passing seven-time world champion and pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton at the start on Sunday.
“If Lewis stayed ahead in Turn Two they would have beaten us today and I probably wouldn’t be on the podium at all. And then you’d be saying, ‘Ah, Mercedes are quicker’, but just because I overtook him you think McLaren are quicker,” he said.
“So, it’s tight. They’re doing a good job. But also McLaren. I’m very happy with them. They’ve done an excellent job.”
McLaren, winners of 183 races, have had only one victory since 2012 — with Australian Daniel Ricciardo at Italy’s super-fast Monza circuit in 2021.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Ken Ferris)
