Norris had a good qualifying session and started close to the front-row Red Bulls of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez on Saturday.
But during the race on Sunday, Norris found himself fighting more with the cars behind him. Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc from Ferrari were catching up fast, especially with Leclerc’s smart one-stop strategy.
McLaren did well at Suzuka seven months ago, but Norris admitted that Ferrari has improved a lot since then, and they couldn’t keep up this time.
“It was as expected, to be honest with you,” Norris said. “It was hard at the beginning when you’re trying to push to keep up with a quicker car or push to stay ahead of the Ferraris, which were quicker.
“You hurt the tyres more and it’s just kind of like a bit of a spiral, fighting a losing battle out there.
“So, not a bad day. We are where we kind of expected to be in the end, which is behind Ferrari. It’s where we’ve been all year.
“Yesterday we just excelled, I put in some very strong laps, and made us look maybe a bit too good. And today it was a bit more back to reality.”
Norris was the first of the top runners to make a pit stop on lap 12 to try and get ahead of Perez and to stop Ferrari from undercutting him.
But when Norris and Leclerc pitted together for the final stop, Norris wondered if they could have done things differently.
“I think we did what was best at the time, but it’s always hard to know. Maybe we didn’t expect Charles to box? I’m not sure,” Norris explained.
“He was close enough that you would kind of want to say, ‘Yeah, if we did something different, maybe we had a better chance’.
“I think we covered George [Russell], which I feel like we maybe didn’t need to do, and because we tried to cover George, we boxed at the same time as Charles.
“I for sure could have gone another five, six laps, created a tire delta, and then come back through as Carlos did. So just an opinion, but it’s something we’ll discuss and review.”
