Norris: Feels like you are fighting a losing battle

Norris said it was disheartening to fight a losing battle against Ferrari in Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix and that it was clear the Italian team still has the edge when it comes to pace.

Norris had been upbeat about challenging for victory at Suzuka after qualifying third fastest but on race day the Briton was nowhere near the two Red Bulls, who finished 1-2, and finished fifth behind Ferrari's Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc.

"Ferrari are clearly ahead, they've been ahead all year," Norris told Sky Sports. "They're still ahead. We've not changed anything. There's no reason why we should be ahead.

"It doesn't feel great when you start third and just kind of go backwards and kind of feel like you're just fighting a bit of a losing battle against these guys.

"They can just do a lot more, you know. It's hard to fight on a track like this, but we gave it a good shot," he insisted.

Norris was in Leclerc's rear-view mirror for a large portion of the race before he was overtaken by Sainz on the 44th lap.

The 24-year-old said he was not convinced about McLaren's decision to have him pit at the midway point of the race when he was hot on Leclerc's heels.

"This is something we'll discuss after in the briefing," Norris added. "Maybe a discussion of if we could have done a better job for people but it's always difficult to make those decisions at the time."

Norris is currently fifth in the2024 F1 Drivers Standings, 18 points behind Sainz in fourth, while his teammate Oscar Piastri is sixth, five points behind he Briton.

Piastri finished eighth in the Japanese GP, losing out to Mercedes' George in the final laps, he said: "Not really the positions that I’d want to be fighting, for sure.

"Just struggled a bit with the tyres. I think we just didn’t really have the pace of the cars around us, so we just need to dig into why a bit," he added.

Piastri was given a helping hand by Fernando Alonso was Russell was attacking, the Aussie reflected: "I could tell by the way he [Alonso] was using the energy I could tell he was trying to keep me in his DRS, so George couldn’t pass me and attack him.

"I knew exactly what he was doing but I just made a bit of a mistake into the last chicane, locked up a bit and that was it.

"I think today showed that we still have some work to do. We’re clearly not quite at the level of Ferrari yet, so just need to find a little bit more.

"I think also for myself, it’s not been the greatest of weekends, so also need to look internally but I think, for sure, we need to find a little bit of a pace in the car as well," Piastri concluded.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the result in Sunday's race was a fair representation of the order of competitiveness this season.

"We did try to go for the podium by stopping early, making sure that we could keep the position on ahead of Carlos," Stella said.

"But ultimately we saw throughout the race that there wasn't enough pace in the car. That's fair enough ... We have upgrades coming so we keep going," he concluded.

(Reporting by Aadi Nair, Additional reporting by GrandPrix247 )