Lando Norris said that McLaren had decided to stick to a low downforce set-up for their car despite today's wet condition in the hope that the gamble will pay off in a dry race on Sunday.
After its famous 1-2 victory for Norris and Oscar Piastri last week in Hungary, McLaren topped Friday practice in dry conditions and didn't want to risk that by changing the set-up of the MCL38 for Saturday's rain.
It meant that neither Norris nor Piastri looked to be challenging for pole in qualifying, with Norris ending up in fourth place for tomorrow's race and Piastri just behind in P5.
“The slightly lower downforce that we have potentially has hurt us a little bit today and hopefully will pay us back tomorrow,” Norris explained in the paddock at Spa after the end of qualifying.
“The whole weekend, the Red Bull has been a step ahead of us even if we were a bit quicker yesterday,” he revealed. “I just think Red Bull didn’t show their cards at all, and we did. What we did yesterday was pretty much all we've got.
"I think going into today we were optimistic still, but I was just struggling a bit," he said. “Just from my side, I just haven’t been able to click very well today. I was always one step behind, always a little bit on the backfoot.
“I was struggling a lot out there, honestly. Just with a bit of confidence, high-speed," he said. "I just haven’t clicked as much as I did in the previous races.
"It sounds terrible but I have to try very hard to try and understand the car in every corner, whereas the last few weeks and months it’s been a lot more natural," he added. "Maybe it's just one of those weekends so far.
"Oscar was almost quickest in the first two sessions [of qualifying].In Q3 I think both just struggled a little bit more," he noted. "To come away with a P5, I was actually surprised with and therefore happy with it.
“It’s not the result I wanted, honestly," said Norris who will line up behind Charles Leclerc, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton tomorrow. "Still got to overtake some quick cars like the Red Bull.
But the lower downforce could benefit McLaren with more straight-line speed as they battle to move back up the order during the race.
“The slightly lower downforce that we have potentially has hurt us a little bit today and hopefully will pay us back tomorrow,” he said. "We will work hard overnight to make sure we’re as prepared as we can be."
"We didn't want to compromise our set-up for today's conditions, because we know that tomorrow we need the top speed," McLaren team principal Andrea Stella confirmed to Sky Sports F1.
"We were ready to pay a bit of a price in qualifying because we want to have the most reasonable car tomorrow in the right conditions.
"At the moment, every weather forecast model is predicting dry [for the race], so we wanted to make sure that we didn't have a glorious Saturday and then the car is not in condition to capitalise on Sunday.
"It's actually the easiest circuit for overtaking, so it's a race that will be dominated by the tyre behaviour. I think the starting position is not the dominant factor.
"It's important that we are there at the end of the race, we do a good job managing tyres, and that we use the potential of the car in terms of top speed. If we blend all these factors together, we can have a good Sunday."
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