Lando Norris: “It was tricky with the traffic and difficult to get laps in with the red flags”

Lando Norris felt it was a tricky day for both himself and his McLaren F1 Team on Friday at the Circuit Zandvoort due to the red flag interruptions across both sessions, but he feels the team are in a good place heading into the rest of the weekend.

Sebastian Vettel stopped on track during the morning session and caused a lengthy stoppage, while the afternoon saw more red flags as first Lewis Hamilton broke down and then Nikita Mazepin spun into the gravel trap.

Norris ended eleventh fastest in the morning session and eighth in the afternoon, and he knows he will need to push hard and get the lap times in when it matters in Qualifying on Saturday afternoon amid the traffic that is expected to plague the sessions.

“A tough first day,” said Norris.  “It was tricky with the traffic and difficult to get laps in with the red flags and stoppages.

“It began with a good feeling with the car, and we weren’t too bad, but we’ve got some work to do to be able to consistently get good laps in during qualifying, which I’m sure we can do. A decent day but work to do overnight.”

“This morning I was relatively comfortable, this afternoon not so” – Daniel Ricciardo

Team-mate Daniel Ricciardo felt the team went the wrong way with set-up on Friday afternoon, but the Australian feels positive that he can have a strong weekend amongst the sand dunes at Zandvoort this weekend.

Ricciardo finished fourteenth in the morning session but only fifteenth in the afternoon, with the car feeling better for him in the initial session before changes made it a trickier afternoon for the popular Australian.

Heading into the weekend, Ricciardo feels McLaren will be in good shape on Saturday for the all-important Qualifying session around a track he feels is a lot of fun to drive.

“This track’s cool, it’s a lot of fun!” said Ricciardo.  “I definitely enjoyed that. This morning I was relatively comfortable, this afternoon not so. We tried some things on the car that, in hindsight, I don’t think were the right direction.

“But, that’s what free practice is for. It made FP2 a little more tricky, but we’ll go back and learn from that. I think we’ll still be in good shape tomorrow, but today we were just a little bit off in FP2.

“There are some quick cars out there, so we’ve got our work cut out for us, but it’s a fun track and I’m really enjoying it.”