Lewis Hamilton may be the Silverstone king, but Lando Norris fancies his chances of being the best home racer at the British Grand Prix.
The two Brits share the third row of the grid for the start of the race, having qualified fifth and sixth on Saturday. Hamilton will be slightly ahead of his younger compatriot, but that does not seem to deter the McLaren man, who was pleased with his qualifying result.
"I definitely think we are able to," he said when asked if he thinks McLaren is capable of competing against Mercedes. "We were able to prove that [in qualifying]. We are ahead of one of the Mercedes cars.
"They were quicker anyway and they had a big upgrade package and we are still ahead of one of them and I think only a tenth behind Lewis. It was a little bit surprising but we did a good job altogether to even be ahead of one of them. It shows at times, the car is still there and has good potential."
McLaren's form so far this season has been patchy, with some excellent results tempered by a few weekends to forget. Last time out in Montreal neither Norris nor Daniel Ricciardo managed to score any points, which saw them reeled in by their midfield rivals.
The papaya team is currently fourth in the constructors' standings – which is where they aim to finish as the 'best of the rest' behind Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari. But Alpine are only eight points behind, while Alfa Romeo are also very much in the hunt.
Part of McLaren's issue has been a lack of performance at some tracks where the surface is more bumpy, so Norris is pleased to be back at Silverstone instead of at another street circuit. "As we said over the past few weekends, when we have been to these bumpier tracks, they are just the sort of places and with characteristics the car doesn't like as much," he added.
"This is a bit more back in line with what we were expecting, in a way, and more in line with Saudi [Arabia] where we were able to perform better and get in the points and so on. There will be tracks we struggle at more, tracks we struggle at less.
"Of course, we are still going to continue to try and improve the car in every way as much as possible within the capabilities we have got. We came into this weekend, we managed to explore the set-up even more and we have got more performance and potential out of that."
