Saudi Arabian GP: Lando Norris critical of himself and rejects claims McLaren is the fastest car. Lando Norris admits personal mistakes cost him a podium in Saudi Arabia.

Lando Norris leaves Jeddah after throwing away one of the best opportunities to win the sixth Grand Prix of his Formula 1 career and, more importantly, to gain ground in the Drivers’ Championship.

Having entered the race as the favorite after impressing in free practice, Lando first threw away the chance to take pole by crashing in Q3 yesterday, then made a couple of major mistakes in the race that compromised a potential podium finish after starting from tenth.

In his battle with Lewis Hamilton for sixth place, Norris tried to overtake the 7-time world champion at the penultimate corner twice, giving Lewis the opportunity to strike back with DRS on both occasions. The experienced Hamilton retook the position both times, costing the McLaren driver valuable seconds.

“Fourth place is the best result I could get today. Obviously, missing the podium is a real shame. I make life harder for myself, especially in a race like this—it would’ve been much easier if I had started further up,” Norris admitted after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. “I need to help myself by putting together better Saturdays than I have so far.”

After pointing the finger at himself, Lando Norris went on to share his view on McLaren’s performance compared to Red Bull’s. In his opinion, the RB21 matches the MCL39 both in qualifying and in race pace.

“Red Bull is as fast as us in qualifying, and also in the race. Just because we’re quick in practice, people keep coming out with all this crap (about McLaren having no rivals in the race, ed.).”

“We believe we’re a lot quicker than we appear. I think Max was probably the fastest today, so we’ve got work to do.”

“People keep saying we’re the best, the fastest, but that’s just because we show good pace in practice. We don’t have any edge left when we get to qualifying. But that’s our working method.”

“This is how we think we can optimize things. If we didn’t do it this way, we’d be even further behind. I’m happy with the job we’re doing—we just need to recalibrate it. We have a great car and I’m probably the fastest on average, but clearly it’s not enough.”