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McLaren has missed out on a "disappointing" number of strong points finishes this year due to car problems, says Lando Norris.
McLaren currently sits fourth in the constructors' championship but saw Renault close in after the Enstone team ended last weekend's Italian Grand Prix in fourth and fifth place, while McLaren picked up a single point.
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Norris has had three DNF's this season so far, two of which came from mechanical issues, while teammate Carlos Sainz failed to finish the last two races due to an engine problem in Belgium and a pit stop error in Italy.
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As he enters the final seven races of his rookie campaign, Norris admits he is happy with the job he has done so far, but understands the importance of scoring points in the coming races for McLaren to maintain fourth in the championship standings.
"From my side and from the whole team side we know in hindsight where we could have finished, and the points we could have scored," said the Briton.
"Sadly it's a fairly disappointing figure. It's disappointing because it's a good figure in how many points we could have scored if everything went well and we had no failures or anything.
"But we can't do anything about that now. We all know that the job I've done is generally pretty good. I've not made any major or stupid mistakes, maybe one or two.
"But on the whole, we're happy, I'm fairly happy. I need to continue this run, not have any more problems and just be able to work on that from now on."
Norris added that he is hoping Renault will slip back at Singapore while McLaren can move forward, not allowing the French manufacturer to gain momentum.
"I'm hoping at Singapore they will take a little step back and we will take a tep forward and it'll be more even again," Norris stated.
"But they have been very strong, and sometimes they haven't really shown it so much so we need to make sure they don't get too confident from this and continue a good trend. We need to bounce back strong."
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Posts: 6
I dont think that Reno will step back much at Singapour.
because they now “trim” chassis for every Gp after summer brake.
They have also chassis upgrade for Singapour,so suprise is not excluded.