This weekend, the Formula Renault 2.0 Northern European Cup lands at Spa-Francorchamps. With two wins to his name, Lando Norris goes into the weekend as one of the four breakaway championship contenders.
This won’t be the first time he’s visited the circuit though. The Checkered Flag caught up with him on the podium of the recent BRDC British F3 round after collecting his fifth win of the season in the famous Ardennes forest.
“I need to practice a bit of everything, so I need a good lap, as that would make race three easier.” he said after the first event. “I don’t plan to back off, I want to take as much as possible.”
“Where I am with lap times, I don’t think I’m great.” Norris said having taken pole. “It was a pretty good lap in qualifying, but we struggled quite a bit on Thursday with pace.”
“So yeah, we were three or four tenths behind the fastest. We had to pick it up a lot. By qualifying we had a four tenths advantage, it was a good turn around.”
The Josef Kaufmann Racing driver currently sits fourth in the NEC standings, after two recent retirements dropped him further back. Norris has made a few appearances in the series this season, though admitted he didn’t come to Spa to learn anything specific.
“Just a bit of everything. I’ve only been here once for the test in F4… we also did a test in Formula Renault at the start of the year. I haven’t done too much at this track, so every little bit really helps. It’s been very useful with the racing, to see where you can go and how to hook up a lap.”
“It’s all about preparing for Formula Renault as that’s my main championship this year. I’ve had a good weekend and I look forward to the next one.”
Another driver present at the weekend was Will Palmer. The BRDC Formula 4 champion made a one off appearance for the flyaway round, collecting experience and recording a pole and a third place finish. He was moderately pleased with the result, but when speaking to TCF, was clearly frustrated to have Norris beat him to the line.
“I haven’t been to the track before, so it’s all fairly new to me. We had a good start in race two and managed to secure pole for race three and couldn’t quite convert it. I had a good start, good first lap, but just fell away with it.”
