Lando Norris driving Fernando Alonso’s McLaren at Spa

A page is turning at McLaren. Now that Fernando Alonso has announced his departure from the team and F1 at the end of the season, the Woking-based team must prepare for the future. One of the pieces of the puzzle is Lando Norris, currently second in F2.

The young Briton has been nurtured for several years by McLaren and does not hide his ambition to join F1 as soon as possible. While he may not have anticipated George Russell being such a tough competitor, Fernando Alonso’s departure offers him a unique opportunity to be promoted.

The competition with Stoffel Vandoorne will therefore be intense in the near future. Although he conducted tests for the team in Budapest, it was during the summer tests that followed the Grand Prix. This time, McLaren decided to put the two drivers in direct confrontation since Lando Norris will take Fernando Alonso’s car for the Friday morning session. Gil de Ferran, the new sports director of the team since the departure of Eric Boullier, stated: This weekend, for the first time, our reserve driver Lando will drive the MCL33 during a race weekend as he will get into Fernando’s car for FP1 on Friday. This is not only part of his development program but also integrates into the evaluation and evolution of the car’s performance.

In other words, McLaren aims to understand whether the performance gap is due to Fernando Alonso’s talent or if the Belgian could better exploit the potential of the equipment provided by the team. The team thus reserves the right to conduct similar comparisons during the upcoming races of the season.

To see the impact that this participation will have on the rest of his weekend as he continues to fulfill his commitments for Carlin in F2. He will need to quickly reacquaint himself with the controls of a less performant single-seater than an F1.

With the participation of www.racingbusiness.fr