Lando Norris was unimpressed with Craig Slater’s question after the Belgian Grand Prix sprint race. The Sky Sports F1 reporter started to describe the Brit’s Saturday as an improvement on his qualifying effort, prompting the McLaren racer to step in and interrupt: “I wasn’t disappointed yesterday.”

The eight-time Grand Prix winner qualified third on Friday ahead of the sprint, but the Brit’s time paled into comparison to team-mate Oscar Piastri’s. The World Championship leader smashed the all-time Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps lap record, beating second-placed Max Verstappen by nearly five tenths of a second. This left Norris with plenty to do in the first race of the weekend, although he recovered well after losing a position to Ferrari‘s Charles Leclerc at Turn Seven.

Norris repassed Leclerc a handful of laps later with the help of DRS, and then set after team-mate Piastri, who himself lost a position to reigning world champion Verstappen after an opening lap pass. The Brit closed to within one second of his McLaren colleague but couldn’t make a pass for second place.

Speaking in the media pen after the sprint, Sky F1 reporter Slater started his question: “Compared to maybe yesterday, you’ve got to be quite pleased with how you performed…” He was then cut off by Norris, who sternly clarified: “I wasn’t disappointed yesterday.”

When Slater reframed his question, Norris gave a more complete answer. “I mean, I was there yesterday, just things didn’t go together when they needed to, so no, I wasn’t worried at all,” he continued.

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“Yeah, I wasn’t on pole, I wasn’t second, but I wasn’t worried about anything either, so I was confident that if I went out again, I could make the changes that I needed to do. So no, I feel fine.

“It’s always a race where you needed a better race car rather than the fastest car, so maybe we have to make some changes if we can. No, I feel good, I feel good after yesterday. I mean, of course, I would love to be higher up, but I wasn’t disappointed.

“But I didn’t do the best job, so I just needed to amend a few things, which I feel like I made some steps forward for today, and we just go again tomorrow, and later.”