Lando Norris says mysterious pains in his upper body left him “afraid to brake” during practice ahead of the Styrian Grand Prix.
Fresh from scoring his maiden Formula 1 podium in Austria last weekend, the McLaren driver had a bit of a return to Earth on Friday as the apparent injury saw his on-track running curtailed.
His pace though was still solid in eighth place, only two-tenths slower than teammate Carlos Sainz, but it is the unknown pain in the cockpit that unsurprisingly got more attention.
“I’ve been struggling a bit physically with I don’t know what, which has been pretty painful,” he revealed.
“We’ve had to cut down quite a few of the laps that we were planning to do just to make sure I’m in good condition for tomorrow. It’s not been ideal.
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“I feel fine now, and walking around, but when I’m driving it’s something that causes me a lot of pain, particularly in the high-speed corners and when I’m braking.
“It’s been pretty frustrating, I’ve not felt confident in the car in terms of pushing it and so on. Hopefully, I can get fixed and be ready.
“It’s just something, I don’t know where in my chest or something.
“I hit the brakes, and the compression, it spikes up massively, so I’m just afraid to brake anywhere, which is not ideal around here.”
McLaren later said it was an upper back issue that was hampering Norris, though its cause was still unknown with the 21-year-old saying painkillers were only “setting me back”.
It’s not that Norris ignores yellows – he doesn’t, he slows when he should be fully accelerating out of Turn 4 – it’s that he overtakes two cars under yellow flags that the stewards are looking at.
(Also LOL at @karunchandhok being the first tag on onboards now) #F1 https://t.co/zAZ1y4digv
— Chris Medland (@ChrisMedlandF1) July 10, 2020
In addition, Lando also suffered another setback after picking up a three-place grid penalty for overtaking under yellow flags in the morning session.
“It was my mistake, a bit stupid of me,” he admitted. “There was no risk, I lifted, but I just carried that little bit more momentum and passed them. It was a silly move.”
