Norris ‘not concerned’ about making another poor start from pole

Lando Norris says he isn’t concerned about his start in today’s Italian Grand Prix despite never having kept his lead from pole position.

He lost the lead at the start of the Dutch Grand Prix a week ago to Max Verstappen. Norris starts today’s race from pole position alongside team mate Oscar Piastri.

Each McLaren driver lost a place at the start a week ago. Norris said the team have looked into what caused their poor getaways at Zandvoort.

“We learned… a couple of things,” he said. “We of course reviewed things like we always do and I feel like we’ve made progress so far with our practice launches and stuff like that. So we’ll just crack on and do our best.”

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said neither of the team’s drivers were to blame for their poor starts last week. “That was on us,” he said. “The drivers did exactly what they were supposed to do.”

Brown indicated the team found a technical reason for their slow starts. “It was in the second phase, so it was traction-related,” he told Sky. “We have looked at it, we have addressed it, but we’ll find out.

“But Lando and Oscar just need to do exactly what they did in Holland and we just need to give them a little bit more traction when it counts.”

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Brown gave no indication whether McLaren will impose team orders on their drivers this weekend. Norris is Verstappen’s closest rival in the championship, trailing the Red Bull pilot by 70 points, while Piastri is another 46 points behind.

“That’s a discussion that we’ll have with Andrea [Stella, team principal],” he said. “First we needed to see how we’d qualify and now we know where we are we can start talking through various strategies.

“We obviously have a constructors’ championship, we’ve got a drivers’ championship and two number one drivers. So we’ll just see how things play out and keep everyone on their toes.”

2024 Italian Grand Prix

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• Red Bull lose constructors’ championship lead for first time in two years
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