Parc Ferme Interviews – Conducted by Jolyon Palmer
Q: Lando Norris, home race, third on the grid but it’s such fine margins out there today?Lando Norris: Yes, good qualifying and you know I’m not going to be unhappy with third. Of course I’d love to be on top here in Silverstone, but Max did a good job, not quick enough for us today. But still, a fun qualifying. Qualifying here at Silverstone is pretty fast and it’s enjoyable and good fun. Yeah, not the top but still a good day.
Q: I can only imagine it must have been hard to put laps together with the speed of these corners, the windy conditions, trying to find tiny margins all the time. What are you focusing on to nail the perfect lap?LN: Little things today. Little things today, put you ahead of behind. Like, you saw how close Q1 was, which was pretty shocking, and I guess good at the same time. But yeah, little margins, little mistakes, little things. You’re talking a couple of hundredths here and there can win or lose you the game today. So tough, especially with the wind and the conditions. A little bit of rain every now and then. But still, all good fun and still happy with the third.
Q: You were third last year, you had a chance to win the Grand Prix on the Sunday. Surely there’s a chance coming tomorrow. Fifteen thousandths behind Oscar, you have Max in the fight as well. You’ve had some great battles with those two in the past, what are we thinking?LN: I think it’s going to be fun tomorrow. I think it’s going to be a good battle between the three of us. Probably more, you know, with Lewis, with Charles behind, with George as well. It’s going to be an interesting Sunday, so I’m looking forward to it.
Q: Oscar, second, you were provisional pole after the first runs there of Q3 but couldn’t quite keep it there on the second run. Are you happy with your lap there?Oscar Piastri: I was happy with the first lap. The first time was mega, to be honest. I was trying to think of how I was going to go faster and I didn’t. So yeah, the last lap was a little bit messy, but it’s been tight all weekend. I think the first time was very good. I don’t know how much the track would have improved, but a little bit on the table, whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. The team’s done a great job. We’ve tried a lot of things this weekend, trying to get a bit more pace. The car’s felt mega all weekend, but there’s been a few points where we were scratching our heads as to why we’re not quicker. So yeah, the team doing a great job getting us back onto the form that we know. It’ll be an exciting race tomorrow.
Q: Alright, take us under the helmet then. You’ve got provisional pole, you wheel back into the garage, you’ve got more than a tenth margin at this point as well. You said you didn’t know how you were going to find more time. You’re hoping that others aren’t, obviously. But the track’s evolving and somehow you’ve got to go back out there and wind it up. How tricky is that?OP: Yeah, it’s tough. Especially when you think it’s a good lap, you don’t want to overdo it and try and go over the limit. I think it was a couple of corners where maybe I was a bit safe on the way in and tried to make up for it on the way out and it didn’t quite work. So yeah, always little bits, it’s fine margins as we know, but ultimately pretty happy with second on the grid. So, I’m looking forward to a fun race.
Q: And as well, you’ve had some great fights with Lando in the last race. It was a pleasure to watch. You’ve had some good scraps with Max. You’re going to start with them tomorrow. Can you get elbows out?OP: Yeah, I think so. It’s going to be a fun race. You know, it’s been very evenly matched between Max, the Ferraris, I saw even George being up there at the end. So I think it’s going to be a pretty evenly paced race tomorrow, and all of have us got slightly different strengths. Red Bull is very quick in a straight line, we’re going to be quick in the high speed. So yeah, it’s going to be a fun one. That’s all. We’re going to enjoy it.
Q: Max Verstappen, what a lap there at the end. You just pinged them all in, all the sectors. How did you do it? Max Verstappen: It was tricky out there with the wind, through the whole qualifying Q1, Q2, Q3. It was all shifting around a bit. Yeah, a bit different. And around here with these cars, it’s extremely sensitive to it. So yeah, just trying to tidy it up throughout the whole qualifying and that final lap was good enough. But you know, I mean, this is a proper track, in qualifying when you have to go flat out in all these corners. It’s really, really committed and that’s really enjoyable.
Q: You say the last lap was good enough. It looked pretty unbelievable from when I was watching it. You’ve also got a trimmed out car on downforce, a choice that you made overnight. I was thinking this is a set-up choice with the race in mind, but you’ve nailed it on pole for qualifying already.MV: Yeah, exactly. We’re quite quick on the straight, which of course is not that easy in the high speed corners to manage. But we did today, luckily. Of course, we have to wait and see what tomorrow will do, if there’s a bit of rain around and all. But I’m happy, of course, with our qualifying. It’s a big boost for the team as well. Just excited to go racing now tomorrow.
Q: And you’ve had some great battles with those McLaren drivers already this season. You’re starting ahead of them. You’ve had some fantastic wins already this year. You have the race pace tomorrow. Do you need to keep them behind?MV: Difficult to say, but we’ll try. Now we’re going to go racing, we’re going to have fun, and we’re going to try to do the best we can.
Press Conference
Q: Many congratulations, Max. What a final lap from you. Just how good was it?MV: Pretty good. I mean, it was not easy out there to produce a consistent lap time just because of the wind, the gusts as well that you got out there. The car was moving around a lot even just on straights, so sometimes a bit unpredictable in places because of it. But luckily, that last lap came together quite nicely. Just had to commit a lot in the high speed with this low downforce that we have on the car, which we just tried to build up on. Luckily in Q3, that worked out.
Q: You were fourth after those first runs of Q3. Just where did you find the time on that last lap?MV: Everywhere except the last sector. So, every single corner, a little bit. My first lap, I don’t know, it just felt really different to Q2. Just more oversteer, more understeer in places, and that then made the lap not amazing. But I never thought that I could find whatever it was, almost four tenths, I think. So yeah, it worked, so I’m happy with that.
Q: Max, it’s been a bit of a recurring theme at Red Bull this year. Unhappy on Friday, big changes overnight, and you guys get it together for Saturday. Just how different does the car feel today compared to yesterday?MV: In some places, quite different. Yesterday, I was just understeering a lot but at the same time also having oversteer in places. It was very difficult to balance. I think today, we definitely improved the understeer and that just allowed me to push a bit more because understeer is slow, especially in F1. So, we just needed to try and minimise that.
Q: So, let’s look ahead to tomorrow. You have good straight-line speed, we saw that today. Just how confident are you in the long run pace of the car?MV: Yeah. I mean, let’s see. We’ll just go in there and try to do the best we can. Normally in the race runs, we struggle a bit more on tyre life. I don’t know how that will be tomorrow. We have to wait and see a little bit also how the weather will be in general, if there is some rain or not. The straight-line speed is nice to have but you still need to manage the tyres around here. It’s very tough with all these high-speed corners. But I’m just looking forward to it. I’m not really in a battle, so I’ll just try to have fun and try to get the best possible result.
Q: Oscar, let’s come to you now. You were fastest after those first runs of Q3. At the time, did you think it was going to be good enough for pole?OP: It was a good lap. I was very happy with it, but I kind of felt like every run, the track was improving a bit. So, I felt like I probably needed a bit more, which was correct. The second lap was a bit scruffy, couple of moments that caught me a bit by surprise. I mean, I always hate blaming wind, but I need to see if it was the wind. But also, maybe trying a bit too hard in a couple of places as well to make up for it. Overall, pretty happy. It’s been tight all weekend, especially through qualifying, so P2 is not a bad result.
Q: Oscar, as you say, it is very tight. Just two tenths of a second separating the top five in qualifying. Have you been surprised by just how close it is?OP: Not necessarily. For me, what’s the biggest surprise is how each car is generating their lap time. You look at the speed traces and they all look completely different, but they end up basically at the same point at the end of the lap. So that’s been quite interesting to get our heads around. I’m not that surprised that Max is quick here. It’s quite similar to Suzuka, similar conditions to Suzuka. Clearly, they found some pace from yesterday. I think the big surprise was Ferrari yesterday, and even this morning. So not a huge surprise that it was so tight. Maybe how many teams were involved was a surprise, but it’s been tight in nine out of ten qualifyings this year.
Q: Interesting that you reference Suzuka. Do you think we’ll see more overtaking tomorrow here at Silverstone than we did in the Japanese Grand Prix?OP: I hope so, because there wasn’t a whole lot in Japan. Let’s see. I think the tyres will be a bit more interesting than they were in Japan potentially, and also with the different strengths of different cars that we’ll see which seems to be the better compromise tomorrow. I hope so. If it’s good for one overtake, then I’d be pretty happy. But let’s wait and see.
Q: Lando, let’s come to you now. Great job as well. It’s incredibly close at the front. Just how smooth was the session for you, first of all?LN: Reasonably smooth. As smooth as I could probably ask for. Most of my laps were all pretty decent. Q1 was the only little nervous one just with how close it was from the front to last really. Otherwise, all good. Most laps always improved and found good lap time. Probably just my final one, would have hoped to find just that little bit more. Just didn’t quite get the grip out of it in some corners, and the right balance, but I’m still happy with the third.
Q: Pirelli have gone one step softer with the tyres this year. Just how much of a factor do you think that’s going to be in the race?LN: Certainly it can be a factor. It was very warm yesterday comparing to today and then comparing to what it’s going to be tomorrow. There’s also some rain expected for tomorrow, so let’s wait and see. I think it could still be a difference in strategies. Like Oscar said, every car gets lap time quite differently. We probably seem a little bit more in the middle of both a Red Bull and a Ferrari, but I think it can easily make a lot of opportunity come everyone’s way tomorrow. So probably expecting a tough, but an exciting race.
