McLaren F1 junior Norris: F2 debut more difficult than I expected
Lando Norris says his competitive Formula 2 debut at the Abu Dhabi 2017 season finale was tougher than he expected it to be
Norris, who will race in F2 for the Carlin squad next season, took part in the last two F2 races of 2017 for Campos Racing in Abu Dhabi.
He qualified 13th before his engine let go in the feature race and finished ninth on the road in the sprint event, although a time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage dropped him to 13th.
The 2017 European Formula 3 champion stayed on for the post-season F2 tests at the Yas Marina circuit, where he finished with the 12th fastest time.
In this latest clip from weekly Motorsport.tv programme The Flying Lap, Norris discusses his first F2 weekend.
"It was different," he says. "The actual race weekend itself was very difficult.
"I'd never been to Abu Dhabi before and just getting used to the new car, new tyres, new track new team - it's very difficult to adapt to all of those things in such a short amount of time, especially when you have very limited laps on the Pirelli tyres.
"It's not easy to learn and progress a lot throughout the practice and qualifying sessions.
"[It was] more difficult than I'd thought.
"But when I got to the testing after the race weekend and I could take my time a bit more to practice and to test things, it went a lot better.
"Not perfect - I wasn't the fastest - but as I got to know the team more and we progressed and I think I helped develop the car a bit more.
"But [it's a] new car in 2018 so it's all going to change."
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments