Norris: “Our best Friday so far”

The McLaren garage is starting to regain (a bit of) its momentum. After a very challenging start to the season, with numerous issues during winter testing, Daniel Ricciardo testing positive for Covid, and an opening Grand Prix resulting in zero points, the Woking team is starting to bounce back.

After Lando Norris’ impressive seventh place finish in Jeddah, where Ricciardo could also have scored points if not for a retirement, the first practice sessions in Australia are promising.

Both MCL36 entered the top 10 during Free Practice 1 and 2, a satisfaction for Lando Norris. « It was good, not incredible but good. It’s probably our best Friday so far, so I hope it continues tomorrow because we have good feelings.

We have made some changes and learned from the past two weekends for this one, and it is working reasonably well. It’s a small step forward, so it’s a good start, and I hope we can continue on this path tomorrow and make further improvements. », Lando Norris hopes.

The young driver also knows that the Melbourne circuit, with much fewer slow corners than in Bahrain, favors the MCL36, as was the case on the urban track of Jeddah two weeks ago.

« It’s just the track, but there are also small things that we have improved and that may give us a tenth of a second. We won’t gain half a second or a full second, » warns the British driver. « We extract everything we can from the car and I think we’re doing a good job. But a big part of what you see is due to the track. »

« We hope that Bahrain was just a very bad race and I think we understood the car a little better, and we hope for more circuits like Saudi Arabia or here. We are heading in the right direction, but the road is long.

» “I hope,” says Norris, who currently holds the tenth place in the standings with six points. Still far from the 27 units that the Briton had last year after two races, proof that McLaren, despite the improvement, remains far from its usual standards.