Kimi Antonelli has a comfortable lead in the championship, 50 points clear of nearest challenger Lewis Hamilton and even further ahead of Norris, but the defending champion said after his first Grand Prix win of the year that he is confident more victories are on the way after McLaren finally got their upgrades to work.
The Brit joked: “How many points behind am I? 91? [Antonelli] should feel the pressure, that’s for sure. 91, that’ll be done in like two races… or 10.” But then Norris added: “The pressure is on him, for sure, there’s no pressure on me. I’m feeling confident and they’ve been making more mistakes as a team. We have made less and we’ve certainly come on strong.
“I still expect them to win races. I expect us to win more races, we just need to be perfect from here on out, for the whole year. We need to improve the car still. It was certainly better [here] and certainly the quickest all weekend, from qualifying to the race, but not every race is going to be this simple and are we going to be as quick, so we need to work hard to try to get the car to be this good everywhere. If we can, then maybe that’s a genuine question.”
Mercedes were not their usual imperious selves but Antonelli was happy to limit the damage done by his qualifying grid penalty and secure a ninth podium from the first 11 races. The result maintains his strong position heading into the summer break and increases his chances of ending only his second year on the grid as by far the youngest champion in F1 history.
The teenager said: “We had to really fight for it. But Ferrari, McLaren, they brought upgrades so it was kind of expected. It’s going to be very tight. McLaren did a massive step forward and Ferrari was quick. You can never write off Max [Verstappen] and also George [Russell] is going to be back in shape for sure. We just need to really keep raising that bar and come back stronger, because it’s going to be a really big push.”
George Russell was the pre-season favourite but has been hampered by a wretched run of luck which continued here. A water leak cracked his engine at the end of qualifying and his Mercedes went into anti-stall at the start of the Grand Prix, dropping him down to 19th and forcing him into a recovery drive which saw him climb back up to seventh, one place below where he started.
The Brit said: “Add it to the list of things that have happened in this first half of the year and pray that things calm down in the second half. Honestly, I’m just staying positive because I’ve gone through being so disappointed with everything that has happened in this first half of the year.
“At one point, you just have to pick yourself up and accept that there’s a lot of things out of your control that may work against you. There are things in my control I need to do better and I’ll continue to work on that. Of course, I’m not happy with how things have gone, but I’m going to stay positive and keep on pushing.”