‘One of my hardest F1 races’ - Norris reveals tonsillitis struggle

Despite feeling unwell, Norris battled through to finish an impressive eighth at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. 

The young British driver was knocked out in Q2 after his best lap was invalidated for exceeding track limits at Turn 12, meaning he was out-qualified by McLaren teammate Daniel Ricciardo for the first time in nine grands prix.

Norris recovered well in Sunday’s race, even overtaking Ricciardo on track in the early stages to finish inside the top 10 for the fourth time in 2022.

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Norris’ ill health was highlighted by the fact he was forced to miss the usual pre-race ceremony and several of McLaren’s engineering meetings across the weekend.

“Today was tough,” Norris explained. “I was feeling really unwell before the race as I'm suffering with tonsillitis, and that, in combination with the high temperatures, made this one of the hardest races I've ever done.

“I've been a bit on the backfoot this weekend as most of my energy has been spent fighting off this illness.

“I've had to miss a lot of engineering sessions, which has compromised my weekend, and I definitely wasn't as prepared for the Grand Prix as I could have been. With that in mind, I'm really pleased to have come out of the race with decent points for the team.”

McLaren introduced a significant upgrade package for the F1 Spanish Grand Prix - 10 components in total - but they still lagged behind midfield rivals Alfa Romeo and Alpine in outright pace.

Norris’ points haul means McLaren remain fourth in the F1 constructors’ championship going into this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix.

“The team have been working really hard to bring performance to the car, so I'm glad we could take something from the weekend,” Norris added. 

“We'll look at the data over the next few days, see if there's any additional performance we can extract from the car and make sure we're ready to go for Monaco.”

Another torrid day for Ricciardo at F1 Spanish GP

Even though Ricciardo was able to qualify inside the top 10, the Australian quickly found himself out of the points in Barcelona.

A lack of pace meant Ricciardo found himself behind Norris, Yuki Tsunoda and Fernando Alonso (who started last) within the opening 18 laps of the F1 Spanish GP.

Given Norris was racing unwell, Ricciardo should have been the lead McLaren.

Speaking after the race, Ricciardo admitted that he simply didn’t have any grip from the start of the race.

“Yeah, I wasn’t there from the start. And it wasn’t it wasn’t like I had understeer - I mean, I did - but it was just overall lack of grip. I thought at the start of the race, it was very, very slow. I thought, okay, maybe, I don’t know, temperatures just got too high or something with the tyres.

“You know, [at] the start you’re obviously fighting cars and maybe things like that can happen. We did a three-stop race, so I have four sets of tyres today and was very, very slow and all of them so not sure. Really, really sad race.”

McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl added: “It was a long and challenging Spanish GP under very hot conditions. Lando together with the team maximised everything we had in our hands today and finished in P8. 

“On Daniel's side unfortunately, after getting into Q3 yesterday, we were struggling a lot with the rear of the car whenever we tried to push more, and went backwards in the race finishing in P12. We have some homework to do over the next couple of days to understand why.

“Lando did not feel well all weekend but showed great fighting spirit battling it through and bringing home some points for the team. We wish him a speedy recovery now in the next few days and will hopefully have him back at full energy in Monaco in a couple of days.”