FIA post-race press conference – Austria

1. Lando Norris (McLaren), 2. Oscar Piastri (McLaren), 3. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)

TRACK INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by Davide Valsecchi)

Q: Lando, what a race. What enormous pressure. How did you handle it? From outside, that was just epic.

Lando NORRIS: Yeah, it was a tough race. You know, pushing the whole way through. Tricky, hot, tiring. But the perfect result for us as a team, a one-two is exactly what we want, and we did it again. So, I'm very happy. Probably the best comeback after Canada.

Q: What a turnaround. How did you handle Oscar Piastri in the first 20 laps? At a certain point when he overtook you just up there in Turn 3, you had a great battle.

LN: We had a great battle, that's for sure. Yeah, it was a lot of fun for me. A lot of stress, but a lot of fun. Yes, a nice battle. So well done to Oscar. Hopefully, it was a nice one for everyone to watch. But inside the car it was tough, especially when he was in the DRS. The DRS is so big around here, it's hard to get him out of the gap. But once I did, I could manage things pretty well. But yeah, he was still quick. So, it was good fun.

Q: Congratulations. It was a great show.

LN: Thank you.

Q: Oscar, congratulations. How was it drom inside the car because it was impressive how you could pressure for all the first 20 laps. It was just something unbelievable. How was it from inside?

Oscar PIASTRI: Intense. I hope it was good watching because it was pretty hard work from the car. So yeah, I tried my absolute best and probably could have done a better job when I just got ahead momentarily, but yep, it was a good battle. A bit on the edge at times and probably pushed the limits a bit far. But yeah, it was a good race. You know, that's what we're here to do, try and race each other and then try and fight for wins, and that's what we did today. It was close for me but not quite enough. So, thanks to the team. To have the kind of pace we did whilst battling each other was very impressive. So, I can't thank the team enough for the car we've got.

Q: After yesterday and your Friday, did you expect to be so competitive, to fight Lando all through the entire race?

OP: Yeah, I mean, I thought it was possible. I think qualifying yesterday was unfortunate with the yellow flag, and then I felt like the pace this weekend has been good. So, I think once I could stay in the DRS, I felt pretty good. Afterwards, once I dropped out after the first stop, it was tough to make the progress to get back. But yeah, some things to go over, see if we could have done anything better.

Q: Congratulations. Lovely show.

OP: Thank you.

Q: Charles, tell me your feeling after you're back on the podium. I think at the beginning you wanted to fight for victory, but then the pace was there. What do you think? How do you rate your weekend?

Charles LECLERC: I rate our weekend as a team really well. But unfortunately, the pace today was just not enough. In the first corner I was thinking about going, but Lando closed the door, and then that left the door open to Oscar. I lost second place there. But anyway, I think they were too fast for us to stay in second, so third was the best we could do. I don't regret much of what we've done today. I think we've done our maximum, just not enough pace.

Q: Tell me about your Ferrari. The move at Turn 3 was good because behind there was contact. Probably it was better to stay calm in that corner. And about your Ferrari, seems that during the weekend you improved a bit, then in the race, in the first part, you were closer. What's your feeling inside the car?

CL: Yeah, in the first stint I think I over pushed a little bit at the beginning trying to follow them, then I degraded a little bit more. But it's part of the game. I’ve tried, at the end, and it didn't make it today. I think eventually we need more pace. We've brought some upgrades this weekend and they definitely helped us to do a step forward, but we need to keep pushing in that direction in order to close the gap to the McLaren that for now are too quick.

Q: About the next races, because we are missing a victory this year. Tell me about the next races.

CL: I'm missing it too. So, I'll give it all to try and be back on the top step of the podium. Obviously, this is our main priority. The whole team deserves it, and hopefully it will be at the next race in Silverstone. We’ll give it all.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Congratulations, Lando. It was a thrilling victory for you today. What was the most pleasing aspect of it for you?

LN: Crossing the line at the end! That was the best bit, but there was plenty of fun along the way, with Oscar, in the first stint especially. Some close moments, some good battles. Just a lot of laps of looking in my mirrors out of Turn 1 and all the way down to Turn 3. Stressful for sure, not the most comfortable position to be in, but it was a good battle between us. And then quite a long race from that point onwards because I never had a lovely gap, and Oscar kept coming at me the next two stints. So, yeah, good fun, but a tricky race, but well managed.

Q: This was the first time that we've seen you and Oscar going wheel to wheel for a prolonged period. Did you learn anything new about him today?

LN: No. I mean, we just had some good battles, and we've had a couple in the past. Granted, they probably didn't last as long as they did today, but no, I think we both knew what to expect from each other. We both want to race hard and race fair. It goes both ways, and of course, kind of have to put Montreal behind us and behind me for sure. It's something I wish never happened, but it was nice that we could go out and have a good battle and push things to the limits. There were still some close moments, but nothing that would make Andrea or the pit wall sweat too much.

Q: The pace today, Lando, was frenetic. You were twenty seconds ahead of Charles in third place. Were you pushing hard in all three stints?

LN: Yeah! Especially stint one. I think we got, like, ten laps here, and the gap was already, like, five seconds. And I knew what our pit stop window was going to be or was planning to be. And I was like, there's no chance we're going make it to the pit stop here. Oscar was pushing too, and I think we knew quite quickly that we weren't racing the Ferraris behind with a quick race car, and it was kind of eyes forward. But the first stint was difficult just because I couldn't get my battery up, and it was quite a strategic part of the race. And I was just always vulnerable for those reasons. But as soon as I did the pit stop, I could get the battery back up for the first time, and then I could be a little bit more comfortable.

Q: This is a great springboard for you ahead of your home race at Silverstone next weekend. Are you expecting the updated parts on the McLaren to perform strongly through Silverstone's fast sweeps?

LN: I mean, our strengths here were the high speed, so I want to hope it's a similar case next weekend, but it's still a very different track. It's a different layout. We're not going to take anything for granted. But the upgrades were working as they should have done today, and that's certainly a good sign. So I think we give a lot of credit to everyone back in MTC and to the whole team for giving us another very, very good car, upgrades that we just can put on – they've been a little while and we've been pushing with things – but we put them on the car, and they worked as they should. So we're satisfied. The team is satisfied and excited for next weekend. The best race weekend of the year, in my opinion. To have my own grandstand, to have the British fans for McLaren and for myself is something I'm looking forward to for sure.

Q: Alright. And very well done today. Thank you, Lando. Oscar, let's come to you now. Can we start by talking about that battle with Lando, what you learned about him, how close it was?

OP: I mean, again, there have been a few battles in the past, not just last week, but last year and the year before. So, I think we both knew what to expect. It was a tough battle. It was close at some points, probably pushing the limits a bit much from my side once or twice. But we're fighting for race wins in Formula 1. It's going to be pretty tough work and pretty hard. I thought it was an entertaining race. After the first stop, maybe we didn't do the right thing giving Lando some breathing room, but the first 20 laps were pretty intense. So, it was a good battle.

Q: Why did you pit four laps later than Lando?

OP: I knew that I was always going to be pitting second in that scenario. For me, it felt like if I couldn't stay within DRS, then getting back inside one second was going to be very, very tough. So, I kind of wanted to go a bit different and give myself some fresher tyres and hopefully be able to use them at the end of the stint. It didn't really pan out that way, unfortunately, but that was the thinking at least. We'll go back and look and see whether that was the right thing to do. In the moment, I was always going to lose some amount of time by pitting a lap later, so I kind of went, why not try something a bit different?

Q: It was a great battle with Lando. Just how crucial was it for you to pass Charles on the run to turn one?

OP: Yeah. It made a big difference. It meant I could stay in DRS from the start, and DRS is very powerful here. So that certainly helped in the battle at the start. That was an important moment of the race, and then it pretty quickly became clear that it was just going to be a fight between us two. That was a key moment.

Q: It was a fight between you two here. Given what you now know about the car, do you think it'll be a two-horse race at Silverstone next weekend as well?

OP: I hope so, but you never know. Canada, we kind of thought we'd be good there, and we weren't. Here, we expected to be good, but probably not as good as we have been. I think we should be confident that we'll be decent, I think that's fair to say. But how quick we are, we'll find out next week.

Q: Alright. Oscar, very well done to you as well. Thank you. Charles, let’s come to you. Your third podium in four races. What were the key moments for you this afternoon?

CL: Oh, I did not expect that question. There weren't very many key moments on my side. Obviously, the start, I wish I had done a bit of a better job to be completely alongside Lando. Maybe that would have changed a little bit for three or four laps. I don't think we had the pace to stay there in front. Basically, from Turn 1 one to the end, it was a very boring race. I was on my own, just trying to manage quite a few issues that we had on our side. Let's not call them issues, but we've got to do some management in the situation we're in at the moment. I won't go into the detail, but the lift and coast was a little bit frustrating. We paid a bit of the price for it on the first stint, but then the second and last stint were a bit more positive, which was good. But there weren't many key moments apart from the start.

Q: Having put a race distance on the upgrades this weekend, are you confident that they are a good step forward?

CL: They are definitely a step forward. Yes. And I think it helped us to be on the podium today. The team has done an incredible job at pushing to try and get them as early as possible. I know that they are still pushing extremely hard to have other upgrades as soon as possible, which I hope will make another difference and will help us to be a bit closer to McLaren, to Red Bull in their good days, or to Mercedes even in their good days. So, yeah, we are pushing hard, and I hope that we see the result as soon as possible.

Q: Are you surprised by the pace of McLaren this afternoon?

CL: Surprise is probably not the right word. The first stint was poor on our side, but the second and last stint I thought were reasonable, but I've got to look. I mean, I was obviously focused on my race, and I didn't see all the lap times. I saw the gap at the end of the race, and it's not the gap that you would want to see, but that's unfortunately the gap that we've had, if not more, since the beginning of the season. For us, we are working a little bit in relative to the others. And for now, this weekend, it's a step forward, and I hope that we can do another one as soon as possible.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Lando, you mentioned Canada and wanting to put that behind you. How perfect a response has this whole weekend felt? Because you've been P1 every single session. And to soak all the pressure that Oscar put you under, does it feel like you've maybe not proved a point, but to yourself even just to bounce back like this?

LN: I mean, it's certainly, yeah, it's fulfilling for me. It gives me good confidence. I don't need to prove any points or prove anything to anyone, honestly. I like to prove things to myself, probably more than anything. So certainly, it's been a good clean weekend from FP2 onwards. Felt very comfortable and very on top of the car and performed exactly as I want to and as I need to. I just had a clean weekend. That's what I had. It's not that I've not been able to do it before and the pace has always been there at certain points. It's just there's been some different reasons for different things. But certainly, coming in today and yesterday to do the job that I did, I'm pretty happy with. But it doesn't come easily. It doesn't come just because I've turned up this weekend and things are better. I'm working a lot. I'm doing a lot more work than I used to away from the track with the team, on the simulator, with my own team, trying to improve everything that I can, both on and off the track. I think it's more a positive thing to see a lot of those things paying off immediately. Good step in the right direction. Still need more, so want more. So, we'll keep working.

Q: (Leonid Kliuev – Grande Premio Brazil). Question for Oscar. Do you think the team should have insisted on pitting you right after Lando and give you a chance to win?

OP: I don't know yet. We'll go back and look through it. Like I said before, I think I was always going to lose time by pitting second. I had past experience of being just stuck outside DRS, and that was a pretty painful place to be in the past. So, I didn't really want to be there again. In the moment, I thought that giving myself a bit more work to do but with better tyres was going to be an interesting option. With hindsight, yeah, maybe you can say it wasn't the right call, but there's a lot of things you can say in hindsight.

Q: (Lawrence Edmondson – ESPN) Another question for Oscar. The team described that move at Turn 4 as “too marginal” over the team radio. Sorry if you've already gone through this, but what was your interpretation of that? And Andrea said you apologised as soon as you crossed the line or at least acknowledged as soon as you crossed the line that perhaps it was a step too far in aggression.

OP: Yeah. I mean, I thought it was a fair comment. Locking up and missing the back of your team-mate by not a lot is certainly pushing the boundaries. Even if I hadn't been told anything, I didn't think it was a wise decision to try that one again. So, yeah, a fair comment and nothing more than that.

Q: (Zsolt Godina – F1Vilag.hu) Charles, on Friday, you seemed to struggle quite a bit with the pace, but for Saturday your pace improved quite a lot. Was that the result of some setup changes or what happened?

CL: Yeah. We changed quite a lot of things on the car. Obviously, I missed FP1, so FP2 was all about trying to understand where we were. Then for FP3, we did a big change in order to re-centre ourselves. I think we did a really good job from Friday to Saturday, only with one session to be able to re-centre ourselves. As soon as I got into the car in FP3, the car was feeling a lot better. I didn't do the long runs with the setup of today, but there weren't any bad surprises as well. I think we did a good job by maximising the car potential this weekend.

Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Another one for Lando. You talk about those improvements and that work you've been doing. You and Will were having quite a lot of chatter through the race, and you were asking quite openly, like, look, I need help in some of these corners. Is that part of that extra work you've been doing? Because it does seem that you guys are not talking more on the radio, but at least more about those sort of granular details in terms of where can I find more pace in particular corners?

LN: It's part of it. Probably not the precise stuff that I've been working on, but that's just part of the general improvements we've been trying to make. I think it was more normal improvements that I've been trying to make. Just things you need when you're trying to win a race. As much as I like to not have any radio and just do my own thing and concentrate, when you've got some quick guys behind you or ahead of you, there's nothing wrong with asking for a bit of guidance and a bit of help every now and then. I'm just trying to utilise the guys I've got around me. My engineers, my performance engineers, they're looking at a lot more data than I can see. Obviously, I'm the one in the car, but when you've got a guy catching you here and there and there are some corners where you can improve, then I want to know those things. I would say that's nothing more than just general improvements but also me trying to be a bit more accepting of some help sometimes.

Q: (Phil Duncan – PA) Lando, you spoke about Silverstone there and your own grandstand and the 140,000 fans. Does that bring any extra pressure? Are you ready to use that to your advantage to get a second win in as many weeks? And to Oscar, obviously Silverstone is Lando's home turf. You two guys are leading the world championship. Are you braced at all for an uneasy or perhaps hostile reception from the British fans?

LN: I mean, I certainly hope that part's not going to happen. The British fans are normally very accepting for all of us and especially for us as McLaren. So I think the first point should be for all the fans to embrace everyone and to support everyone. Certainly, for me, I don't think there's any more pressure. Of course, it's a place I want to win more than anywhere else, but it doesn't change anything. It just puts a bit more of a smile on my face every morning when I wake up. It probably distracts me in a good way more than anything. Now I've got my own grandstand, and I've got more reasoning for different things. More of a positive distraction, I would say, more than a pressure. There's pressure in every race. There's pressure to win today, to be on pole yesterday. I don't think I can put myself under any more pressure. That doesn't change anything. More just something to look forward to, to enjoy every day, enjoy every lap, enjoy the experience, because it's still for me an experience to have my own grandstand, to have so many of my fans there supporting me, cheering me on. Very excited for it. Kind of want to go there now, but I could do with a good sleep as well.

OP: I don't think so. A couple of years ago they were chanting my name in the crowd, so that was unexpected. I'm not sure I'll quite get that again, which is fair enough. I feel like the fans in general this year have been a bit nicer to us. We didn't even have Max Verstappen fans booing us today, so that was a nice change. They've always been very accepting of me. Obviously, I race for a British team, and I think they're big fans of everything papaya and that includes both of us. I'm expecting there to be a lot more Lando fans than me fans, but that's fair. It's his home race as well, so I think it'll be fine.

Q: (Axelle Valliére – MotorsInside.com) Question for all three. During the race, we still saw a lot of times cancelled because of track limits. However, this morning we know now the track will be on the calendar for many years. So, what do you think? Maybe the track is not adapted for actual F1?

LN: I'm very surprised that there were track limits. Maybe Turn 3. Where? I think we just went off track. When we made a mistake, we locked up. The thing is we get a penalty for making a mistake. You get a warning for making a mistake.

Q: (Axelle Valliére – MotorsInside.com) There were no penalties today, but there were a lot of times cancelled. Is it a problem?

LN: No.

CL: I don't think it's a problem anymore. I think the changes that have been made to the track are actually pretty good to stop the problem that there was before. So, yeah, it's not a problem. Actually, I think it shouldn’t anyway be a discussion. I don't know if anybody took a penalty today, but I feel like it's already a big penalty enough, as Lando was saying. It's enough of a penalty to go off now on a track like this. I don't think it's a problem.

LN: Yeah. I agree. They've got the gravel in the main corners where if you go off, you're going to gain time, and you can't gain time anymore. I went off, and I lost a lot of time. We just get the warnings now, but only when we lock up and go off. Same as me last year. I got a five-second penalty for trying to overtake, trying to race in a race. Makes sense. But those things, I think it's a bit stupid. But no, I think this track's a lot better than a couple years ago. It was like 200 off tracks. Now it's, I think, no penalties.