Lando Norris: Looming F1 situation ‘will embarrass everyone’ | F1 | Sport

This was supposed to be the year of Mercedes, with the Silver Arrows favourites from pre-season and following through on that tag with six consecutive Grand Prix victories. But after Lewis Hamilton secured his first win as a Ferrari driver in the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix on Sunday, Lando Norris is worried that the Scuderia are on the verge of leaving everyone else in their dust.

It was a convincing win from Hamilton, who bided his time on an alternative three-stop strategy and showed better pace than anyone on track, despite George Russell leading for the first half of the race. Both Mercedes cars lost time as Kimi Antonelli challenged his team-mate for the lead and that provided the opening for their Ferrari rival.

Hamilton won by almost 20 seconds in the end as Russell, Antonelli and Mercedes had no answer for the pace that he was able to extract from his Ferrari. That’s despite there being some long straights on the Barcelona circuit which should have benefitted the Mercedes-powered cars, given their engines are more powerful.

That has been Ferrari’s main deficit all season but it seems their latest chassis and aerodynamic upgrades have helped to offset that. And, with the Scuderia allowed to bring two engine upgrades between now and the end of the year, Norris worries that they will be unstoppable if they can make gains on that front in the coming weeks and months.

The McLaren racer, who finished third in Barcelona, said: “We are lucky that Ferrari does not have a better engine at the minute. If they had a better engine, they would be dominating. They are the class of the field in terms of cornering performance at the minute.

“We are not even close to them. It is the realistic point of it. We are a long, long way from where we need to be. If they make improvements on the engine side, then they will embarrass everyone. We need to really get our heads down and see what improvements we can make.”

While that was a worrysome assessment as far as he and his McLaren team are concerned, and despite his claim that his car is lacking “a little bit of everything at the minute”, Norris also insisted he is optimistic he will be in the fight at the very front soon. He added: “We are doing a good job as a team, and I think we are making good progress, but these guys are just doing a better job.

“So, we have to give credit to them and admit to ourselves that we have got to keep working hard and keep putting in the effort. But the whole team is doing that, so I am very happy with them. We just have to keep our heads down and keep working, and we will get there soon.”