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Lando Norris secured his first podium finish at the 2022 F1 Imola Grand Prix this weekend. He contributed significant points to McLaren with a P5 finish in Saturday's sprint race.
The Briton claimed that the team did not expect to be in this position so early in the season. This is especially true when considering their visible struggles since the beginning of the 2022 season and their devastating performance in the season opener in Bahrain.
In a post-race media interaction, Lando Norris revealed that he did not expect a podium finish for the team all year, so to secure it in the fourth race was a welcome surprise:
"Surprised I guess to be here, but feels amazing. So, from where we were, what, three weeks ago, four weeks ago, a month, in Bahrain to be on a podium, I genuinely didn't think we would be on the podium all year after Bahrain. So it’s quite a shock."
"Maybe not surprising after the kind of progress we’ve made over the last month but yeah definitely not a podium you know, with how much quicker the Red Bulls and the Ferraris are. It's hard to ever imagine yourself on the podium and a great result today would have been P5."
He continued:
"But a few good things throughout this race, you know, an amazing start to be ahead of the Ferraris, to stay out of the chaos which happened behind, just I guess a lonely but a great race. You know, just managing the gap to George, looking after the tyres for the whole stint, everything just went well all weekend to be honest."
"Not just the race today, but qualifying P3 already was a pretty good achievement for us. So great weekend. Nice to see the improvements we've been bringing and to reward everyone with a podium is even better."
After a splendid weekend in Italy, Lando Norris now stands sixth in the drivers' standings with a total of 35 points.
Former world champion claims Lando Norris is "world champion material"
Ahead of the Imola GP, two-time world champion Emerson Fittipaldi revealed that he believes Lando Norris has the potential to contend for a world championship title in the future.
As reported by the Mirror, Fittipaldi said:
“I think Lando Norris has already established himself as what I call a potential, World Champion material. I was with McLaren in Jeddah, and Zak Brown confirmed that they’ll continue to get better for each race."
The 22-year-old has had his best F1 season so far in 2021, with exceptional drives in Austria and Russia, where he proved himself to be a force to be reckoned with.
