‘That was taking the p***’ – Horner shocked by Norris’s pace in Singapore

Christian Horner has admitted that he was taken aback by how much pace Lando Norris had in the Singapore Grand Prix, with the McLaren driver crossing the line to take victory 20 seconds clear of Max Verstappen despite a couple of brushes with the wall along the way.
It was a dominant win for Norris, who got a good start from pole position to take the lead into Turn 1 – a position that he held in an unchallenged capacity for much of the race.
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There were, however, some close calls during the second half of the 62-lap encounter, with Norris making contact with the barriers on more than one occasion, prompting his race engineer to remind him to apply “full concentration” and “take a drink”.
Asked if he was surprised by just how much Norris had in hand at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Horner responded: “Yeah, that was taking the p***! I shouldn’t say that in an official capacity. I mean, the pace he had in hand on that tyre, at that point in time…
“At that point we’ve conceded the race on pace. He touched the wall for the first time and then touched it for the second time, but obviously got away with it.
“I actually think Max drove a very strong race today and that was what we had, which when you consider where we were a couple of weeks ago, I think we have made some real progress. Obviously we’ve got a lot of work to do before Austin.”
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Horner offered his congratulations to Norris and McLaren for their success in Singapore, adding: “They had a very strong car this weekend and particularly on the first stint they were very quick.
“I think on the hard tyre we looked in better shape, but of course the gap is way too big by then, at a track that anyway it’s very hard to overtake [on].
“I think if you roll back the clock to Friday, on Friday night I think if you’d have said we’ll qualify on the front row and take second place, a significant amount ahead of the rest of the field, I think we’d have certainly taken that.
“Obviously the gap to Lando was significant in the first part of the race. We’ve now got the best part of a month to work hard and try and bring some performance to the car in Austin.”
In terms of whether this will see Red Bull bring a big upgrade to the upcoming United States Grand Prix – or if the team will instead refine what they already have – Horner admitted that this “probably hasn’t been finalised yet”.
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“There’s a lot of information coming out of these events that will influence what’s going on the car in Austin,” the Team Principal explained.
“We’ve got a lot of information out of the last two races but they’re very, very different venues to the sweeping curves of Austin, Mexico, and Brazil is a different one again, so it’ll be interesting.”
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