Norris dismisses Zandvoort repeat possibility at Monza

Lando Norris has played down McLaren's chances of repeating its dominant performance from Zandvoort at the Italian Grand Prix this weekend.

Norris enjoyed a highly successful weekend in the Netherlands last time out as the Briton showed strong pace in qualifying to secure pole position by over three-tenths of a second.

The McLaren driver enjoyed a stronger race as he won by 22 seconds ahead of Max Verstappen.

F1 has descended upon Monza for round 16 of the championship season this weekend, with Norris liking the track layout to that of Spa-Francorchamps, where the Briton scored fifth place earlier this season.

When asked by media, including RacingNews365, if he expects the low-downforce layout to suit McLaren, Norris said: “Tough to say. I mean, if you compare it a little bit more to Spa, probably, I think we were still pretty good there. 

“Obviously, Red Bull were very quick there, but Red Bull have always been very good in Spa specifically.”

Norris: Monza a 'question mark' for McLaren

Norris is attempting to narrow a 70-point gap to Verstappen in the drivers' standings while McLaren close in on Red Bull in the constructors' table, with the margin between the pair just 30 points.

Casting his memory back 12 months ago, Norris signalled the 2023 Italian Grand Prix was one of McLaren's worst races of the campaign.

Although the team has greatly improved its F1 form since then, Norris is not expecting a repeat of its Zandvoort pace around the high-speed Monza track.

“Here it’s a bit of a question mark,” he said. “It was probably one of our worst races last year, mainly because I just sat behind Alex [Albon] the whole race. 

“It was genuinely one of our trickier races that we did last year. So we're not expecting to be probably as good as we were last weekend, that's for sure. 

“We always knew we were going to be very good in Zandvoort, but yeah, a weekend where we're expecting good competition with all of our competitors.”

Following Friday practice, Norris was second fastest, 0.003s behind Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton, albeit with Verstappen failing to set a representative soft-tyre time due to a small mistake on entry to Parabolica.