“Not enough speed to battle anyone” - Lando Norris reflects on a disastrous Miami GP for McLaren

McLaren driver Lando Norris has said that he did not have enough pace in the car to challenge for positions at the Miami GP on Sunday.

The Briton started the race from P16 and looked to have made a couple of positions but was hit in the back by AlphaTauri's Nyck de Vries in Turn 1. The collision damaged Norris' car and brought him into the pits after the first lap. Post the incident, Norris could not make any headways in the race and finished in P17.

Speaking to F1.com, he said:

"I guess frustrating; it was just a long race, not enough speed to battle anyone, and way out of the points. It is tough, but I did what I could. (We) just need to keep trying to do what we are doing. We didn't do anything wrong; we just have a car that isn't quick enough at the minute, so (we need to) just keep working hard."

Speaking about the first lap incident , the McLaren driver took a cheeky dig at De Vries:

"He's done that a bit lately; (he) needs to try braking a little bit earlier."

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"We tried different strategy, which required something exciting to happen during the race, but it didn’t work" - Lando Norris

While debriefing the race for McLaren's website, Lando Norris said that the team went for a slightly different starting on softs but it didn't pay off.

He said:

"Tough day. We just struggled with pace. I had a good start, but we got hit from behind into turn one, which then put us at the back. We had tried a different strategy, which required something exciting to happen during the race, but it didn’t work. We’ll go back to MTC, reset, and keep pushing hard for a better result in the next one."

Lando Norris' teammate Oscar Piastri added:

"I had a lot of issues on the car in the race. We had a failure six or seven laps in on the brake-by-wire system. I was managing a lot of issues after that. I had a really good lap one, where I managed to pass five cars and that was the highlight of the weekend. Otherwise, a frustrating afternoon, trying to drive around all of the issues. We’ll now get our heads down and focus on having a better weekend in Imola."

It will be fascinating to see if Lando Norris can somehow make three podiums in a row in Imola in a couple of weeks.