Why Norris predicts Red Bull qualifying threat despite beating Verstappen in FP2

Lando Norris fears Red Bull will leapfrog McLaren in Belgian Grand Prix qualifying despite finishing ahead of Max Verstappen in Friday practice.

Norris headed out at Spa-Francorchamps on Friday with a new power electronics unit in his MCL40. McLaren opted to put the Briton onto his fourth unit, exceeding his limit for the season, after Mercedes High Performance Powertrains introduced a series of reliability fixes.

Lando Norris expects Red Bull to be stronger in Belgian Grand Prix qualifying

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Norris will therefore start no higher than 11th in Sunday’s 44-lap Belgian Grand Prix.

The reigning world champion’s pace in Friday’s practice bodes well for a fightback as he finished the day with the second fastest time.

He clocked a 1:46.134, which was 0.190s slower than Kimi Antonelli’s P1 time and 0.282s faster than third-placed Verstappen.

Norris, though, reckons McLaren could fall behind Red Bull on Saturday, and perhaps even behind Ferrari, although fourth-placed Lewis Hamilton was more than half a second slower than Norris.

“I mean, we’ve not really changed anything this weekend, so there’s no reason for us to expect anything different,” he told PlanetF1.com and other accredited media at Spa.

“Red Bull normally just don’t turn up on Friday, so we’ll get to tomorrow [Saturday], and they’ll be just as quick, if not quicker. So let’s just wait and see.

“I think we probably turned up [our engine] with Mercedes, and the rest of them didn’t.

“So I think we’re still probably, at the minute, the fourth-fastest.

“But it seems like if we can get things right, then we might be a little bit closer than we were at Silverstone. So that’s great.”

More on Friday’s news from PlanetF1.com

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Verstappen, though, wouldn’t be drawn on where Red Bull were in the pecking order.

Although he declared Friday to be a “good day” for the team, he said Red Bull isn’t comparing itself to rival teams.

“It went pretty well,” he said of his Friday at Spa, “we didn’t have any major problems and the balance was there right away.

“We had the car set up well and were mainly fine-tuning. Some things worked well, some didn’t, but overall the car worked fine and with the package we have, it was a good day.”

“We are focusing on ourselves,” added Verstappen. “I don’t know how much we can achieve compared to the others.

“I think you will only see the real gaps in the third free practice, but that is nothing shocking and it is as expected.

“Hopefully, we can close the gap heading into qualifying.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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