2 days Ago
SHANGHAI, March 23 — McLaren’s Lando Norris said he was lucky to finish today’s Chinese Grand Prix, and stretch his Formula One championship lead to eight points, after a brake problem became critical in the closing stages. The Briton took the chequered flag in second place, 9.748 seconds behind team mate Oscar Piastri, but said Mercedes’s George Russell would have caught him with one more lap of the Shanghai circuit.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, the four-times champion who is Norris’s closest title rival, finished fourth. “I was lucky. Lucky to finish the race today, which is not something you want to be saying,” Norris told Sky Sports television.
“Brakes are something you hate but something you really do need and they can save your life. “A sketchy last couple of laps because the brakes were getting worse and worse every lap and the last couple of laps, I’m three or four seconds off. So quite nervous.
” The Briton, winner from pole in the Australian opener, qualified in third place with Piastri in the top slot this time and took second from Russell at the start. “I think the team knew about the problem much before they told me about it, so they wanted to keep me calm,” Norris said of the ‘long pedal’. “I would have loved to have challenged Oscar today.
.. I had the pace for sure.
In dirty air, it’s a lot more tricky but I think the pace was there. But Oscar deserved it completely, he was on pole yesterday and a win today. “Shame about my brakes in the end but that’s life and we’ll take it on the chin and move on.
” Team boss Andrea Stella said the problem emerged some 15-20 laps from the end. “Lando did a very good job together with the team to manage through the problem, adapting the driving style that it didn’t become a terminal problem. So not without some tension we bring home a P1-P2,” he said.
— Reuters.
