Lando Norris says the five car DRS train that formed behind Williams' Alex Albon in the second part of the Belgian Grand Prix left him locked out of a potential top-ten finish.
The McLaren driver, relying on a two-stop strategy, ran as high as P9 in the opening stages of the race but after his first pit stop, and switch from the medium to the hard tyre, he was unable to break away from P12.
As the second car in a DRS train running behind Albon that included Aston Martin's Lance Stroll, himself, Alfa's Zhou Guanyu, AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo, Norris was locked in position.
He admitted however that his midfield struggles hadn't come as a surprise.
"I think we knew the racing was going to be a lot worse here this year than it was the previous years, just because the slipstream [was] so much worse," explained the Briton.
"Apart from that, just getting stuck behind the Aston and the Williams.
"The Aston's pace was better than ours today, but the Williams is just so quick in a straight and I'm in the DRS train, so I couldn't do a lot."
©McLaren
Norris nevertheless took away some positives linked to the upgrades implemented by McLaren at Sap and that he hopes will help him fight higher up the pecking order next weekend in Zandvoort.
"The little changes we made to the car for this weekend made a bit of a difference so there’s still some positives to take from it all," he said.
"We tried but we just weren’t quick enough this time around. We’ll keep working hard, keep pushing, take a look at everything in the next few days and try and take the fight back to the Alpines in Zandvoort."
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