Another win tease for Lando Norris
He now has the unfortunate accolade of finishing 2nd more than any other driver this season.
Lando Norris bagged his fourth-straight podium at the US Grand Prix, but the ultimate prize of a race win continues to elude him - and that may continue until next season.
Norris finished the Circuit of the Americas race in 3rd, but he was later promoted to 2nd after Lewis Hamilton was disqualified for a technical infringement.
Norris, who started 2nd, led in the early stages after beating polesitter Charles Leclerc off the line.
For much of the first stint, it looked like Norris might have a shot at victory. He was still in the lead after the first round of pitstops and his gap back to Max Verstappen at that point was about four seconds.
But, Norris’ hopes evaporated throughout the final two stints.
He ran both with hard tyres because he didn’t have another new set of mediums. Verstappen did - and this meant the triple world champion had a superior tyre in the middle stint.
Norris also struggled with tyre wear. “We knew what was going to be difficult today, which was the degradation,” he said post-race. “I didn’t have the tyres left at the end,” he said.
After 56 laps, Verstappen crossed the line to win with a 10-second advantage over Norris.
Afterwards, Norris said a podium was a better result than he had expected coming into the weekend. It was his fourth Grand Prix podium in as many races - and it takes his tally for the season to six.
Interestingly, Norris has more 2nd-place finishes than any other driver this year.
Additionally, his US Grand Prix podium - his 12th ever - took him to 2nd on the all-time list of drivers with the most podiums without winning a race. One more podium and Norris will tie the record, which is currently held by Nick Heidfeld.
In the US Grand Prix post-race press conference, Norris said his best chance of a win this year has been and gone.
“I think Qatar was our best chance of winning a race,” he said, “and I missed out on that one.”
Norris finished the Qatar race in 3rd, but he believed it could’ve been a win if he hadn’t made a mistake in qualifying, which consigned him to a lowly 10th-place start.
Unfortunately for Norris, it’s not the only time a chance at a race win has gone begging.
Who could forget when he led a good chunk of the 2021 Russian Grand Prix, but eventually lost out because he made the wrong tyre call as rain began falling?
This year, Norris also darted into the lead in Britain, but Verstappen only took four laps to make it back past. (In fairness, Norris had little hope of beating Verstappen that day).
Norris said this year’s remaining four races are unlikely to play to McLaren’s strengths.
“I think there's no super high speeds… Suzuka-style circuits left, Qatar-style circuits left which is where we're strong,” he said. Norris added that was not looking forward to Brazil, predicting that McLaren would be “pretty shocking” there.
Still, at this point in the press conference, Verstappen chimed in to try and provide some reassurance to Norris. “[What about] Abu Dhabi? You’re normally quite good there … Abu Dhabi specialist,” Verstappen said.
“Am I? No comment … maybe Abu Dhabi, you never know,” Norris replied. “We'll see.”