Lando Norris, McLaren, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, 2022

McLaren’s tough Canadian GP showed “the car’s not good enough” – Norris

2022 Canadian Grand Prix

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Lando Norris said the Canadian Grand Prix was a wake-up call for McLaren that their car is not competitive enough.

Neither McLaren driver scored after encountering a series of problems during the weekend. Norris was compromised by a power unit fault in qualifying and both drivers were delayed by a slow pit stop when McLaren attempted to service both cars consecutively during a Virtual Safety Car period.

Norris’s troubles were compounded by a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit lane. He finished 15th, while team mate Daniel Ricciardo dropped out of the points places with eight laps to go.

“I think just everything went wrong today,” Norris reflected. “There was just not many positives at all.”

McLaren’s form has been patchy this season. Norris reached the podium at Imola but hasn’t finished in the top five since. He said their lack of performance in Canada showed “the car’s not good enough.”

“At times it’s strong,” he continued, “I was a little bit more optimistic after Friday that we could achieve more today.

“But when I was stuck behind the Williams they’re so fast, probably the quickest in the straights, and we’re probably the slowest in straights and then it’s literally impossible to overtake so we can’t do anything.”

George Russell, Mercedes, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, 2022
Poll: Vote for your 2022 Canadian Grand Prix Driver of the Weekend
He believes the result shows how far off the pace McLaren’s car is. “It’s just not anywhere where we want it. A day like today is probably a good thing in that it shows we’re just a long way off and we have to keep working very hard, keep trying a lot of different things.

“Maybe at times things look great, but it’s never really like genuine pace. We’re a little bit there on luck sometimes and a day like today when it’s just more simple and you don’t have luck on your side, it shows where you’re actually at.”

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl said Norris’s power unit suffered a sensor failure on Saturday but it should be repaired so it can return to use. The team will investigate the errors which led to the slow pit stops for both drivers.

“I don’t want to go too much into the detail because that’s something we have to review internally, as a team, what went on there,” he said. “It was down to communications issue within the team and that was causing the delay.”

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2022 Canadian Grand Prix

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...
Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

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11 comments on “McLaren’s tough Canadian GP showed “the car’s not good enough” – Norris”

  1. The car is made of people that change wheels.

  2. So now it’s a problem cause Norris is going backwards, yet 2 races ago people were calling for Ricciardo to be axed cause he was saying the same things, but the blame is being put on him. McLaren has been a pig of a car for years.

    1. Yeah, I noticed Ted Kravitz couldn’t mention Norris’ supposedly “degraded power unit” enough. I think Lando is great, but Sky seems to be his personal PR department. BTW, has anyone seen Ted’s Notebook. Never seen such awkwardness.

      1. Mr Squiggle
        21st June 2022, 7:31

        ted didn’t mention Nozza’s 5 second penalty for speeding in the pitlane either

    2. Last year’s car wasn’t bad, had some pretty good performances.

  3. With all the talk about sacking Riccardo, the talk should be about sacking McLaren management for designing and manufacturing such a terrible car.

  4. McLaren are a disgrace. They have everything in place to be fighting for wins and championships yet fail miserably.

    They have less excuses than Mercedes

  5. McLaren’s pit team didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory this weekend. But having said that, there were quite a few serious errors across a range of teams. Apart from the bigger wheels, has anything changed that would bring about this rash of poor pit stops?

    1. I noticed that, it almost seems no one – that i saw in TV -was doing a good job changing tires like if were at start of the season.

  6. No mention in this article that Ricciardo was nursing overheating brakes for the latter part of the race. This is another car issue that plagued the team at the season opener, and clearly still hasn’t been adequately addressed.

  7. The ridiculous hype around punting Ricciardo has been hiding this issue for way too long. Finally the penny has dropped. McLaren are dud car makers. Lando needs to get into Hamilton’s seat next year or his career will start looking very beige.

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