Lando Norris accuses the media of "talking crap" in terms of McLaren's superiority.

The Briton's comment comes at a time Max Verstappen gave Oscar Piastri a run for his money in Jeddah, and without a 5s penalty may well have led the McLaren driver home.

Norris insists that those claiming that the McLaren is the class of the field are talking nonsense.

Having crashed in qualifying, Norris was forced to start from the fifth row, and though he made short work of Kimi Antonelli, the same could not be said of his bids to pass Lewis Hamilton.

Then in the final stages of the race, he was unable to hunt down Charles Leclerc in the other Ferrari.

"I think it's the best we could have done today," he told reporters at race end. "Of course, it's a shame to miss out on a podium," he added. "We were close, you know, it's always hard to judge those things.

"Charles drove a good race, good first stint, he gave himself that opportunity to have a decent set of tyres in the second half. And I think he only boxed three or four laps after, five laps after maybe, so not enough to get him.

"I think I'm pleased on the whole," he said of his race. "I just make life tough for myself, especially when it's a race like that, you know.

"It would have been much easier, a lot more chill to drive out the front. In some ways it's a bit easier, so I've got to help myself out a little bit and have a better Saturday."

However, when asked about being surprised by the pace of the Red Bull, he snapped back: "I don't know why people are so surprised. They're just as quick in qualifying in most sessions, they're just as quick as us in the race.

"Just because we're quick in practice, people just keep coming up with all this crap," he continued. "I mean, they can keep saying what they want. We don't believe we're much ahead, as showed.

"I think probably Max was the quickest out there today, if he didn't have that five-second penalty. So we have work to do.

"People keep saying that we're the best, we're the quickest, blah, blah, blah. But it's just because we show a bit more pace in practice and then we don't have anything left when it gets to qualifying.

"But that's our way of doing things. That's how we feel we optimise things. If we didn't do it that way, we'd be even further back.

"I'm happy with the work we're doing. People just need to recalibrate. We have a great car, probably the quickest on average, for sure. But clearly not enough."

Check out our Sunday gallery from Jeddah here.