McLaren driver Lando Norris says that the team are not making the most of the resources they have after their frustrating start to the 2023 season.
The team suffered a dismal opening race in Bahrain. Despite only just missing out on Q3 in 11th on the grid, Norris suffered a pneumatic leak which led to him pitting six times on his way to finishing two laps down in last place while team mate Oscar Piastri retired early with an electrical problem.Norris admits the team needs to do a better job with the resources it has and points to the development of teams such as Ferrari and Aston Martin in recent seasons as proof that McLaren can make significant progress in the years to come.
“Where did I want to be? It’s clear, but where we all want to be is clear: we want to be towards the top,” he said.
“I think that’s everyone’s dream, it’s every team’s dream in the whole grid but when you’re realistic, it’s between where we are now and those top four teams currently. So I think what Aston have done is this clear example and what Ferrari did between ’21 and ‘22 was a clear example of what we need to achieve and want to achieve. And it’s clear that it’s achievable. So we’ve just got to go out and do it.
“I think we have the people, we have so many things that we need. We’re not doing a good enough job with what we have but we all know that and we know that we have some more things coming but at the same time, we have to do better than what we’re doing currently.”
However, Norris dismissed any suggestion that the McLaren was in the midst of a crisis. “No, it’s far from that,” he insisted.
“Everyone makes it sound a lot worse than it is,” Norris continued. “And calling it ‘crisis’ is far from that at all and it’s nothing close to it.
“We’re confident we can get some good points, I would say, this weekend. I think it’s a close fight with Alfa [Romeo] and a lot of those teams. Towards the top four teams, it’s a very big jump. But I’m confident we can be in that fight. I don’t think we’re that far away.”
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Following multiple car problems for both him and Piastri in Bahrain, Norris is confident his team has got on top of the failures and has no reliability concerns heading into this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
“Oscar’s problem was an issue that we’ve had the first time we’ve seen in years and years and years, so [we’re] confident that’s fixed,” Norris explained.
“For my issue, Mercedes are sure that they fixed that and it was, again, something which hasn’t happened for years and years. So both quite rare issues. And both things that we’re confident, both from HPP [high-performance powertrains] side and from McLaren side that are fixed.”
Norris says that despite their difficulties with the early pace of their MCL60, McLaren have a development plan already in place to help them move further up the grid.
“It was made very clear and very early on that we’re far from where we want to be,” he said. “For McLaren’s expectations and who we are as a team, we’re far from where we want to be.
“But we have a very clear plan. I think it’s very clear from everyone back in MTC and here what we need to achieve and want to achieve. It’s just going about setting it and achieving it, which is our next call.”
Norris says he is more optimistic about McLaren’s prospects heading into the race at Jeddah following the early pace he showed before his pneumatic failure in Bahrain.
“I believe we should have been in the top 10 and scored some points in Bahrain, if we didn’t have the issues,” Norris reasoned. “So our plan is to limit that, not have any issues and try again and make up for (what) we lost.”
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2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
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- FIA president Ben Sulayem under investigation for interfering in F1 race – report
- Two races, no points: How 2023 compares to McLaren’s worst starts to a season
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- Alfa Romeo identify “massive debris” which ruined Bottas’ race
Crawliin-from-the-wreckage (@davedai)
17th March 2023, 13:24
Haven’t really improved since their attempt at Indy500 with Alonso.
Steering wheel
We didn’t get out until midday, our steering wheel was not done on time, that’s just lack of preparation and project management organisational skills. That’s where this whole thing fell down, in the project management. Zak Brown should not be digging around for steering wheels.”
Paint job
The Carlin spare was in a paint shop 30 minutes from the track, more than a month after McLaren complained about the color, and it ultimately cost McLaren almost two full days of track time. The team looked foolish as other teams were able to move into backup cars in mere hours;
Wrong tyre sensors
His first qualifying run was sabotaged by a tyre puncture – which wasn’t detected beforehand because Brown said the team had purchased incorrect tyre sensors.
Last ditch attempt alas inches v centimetres
Alonso went out to practice Sunday with an entirely new setup, but in the frantic changeover a mistake was made in converting inches to the metric system the English team uses and the car scraped and sparked on his first lap. It had to be fixed and Alonso got in just five more laps before rain ended the session.
oops wrong gearing
But for all of those mistakes, all it would take is one brilliant and ballsy run from Alonso to squeeze onto the back row and at least put the team in the fight. He almost managed it, too, missing out to Kyle Kaiser by just 0.019mph. It gets worse, though, as Brown revealed the final nail in the coffin of the team’s effort:
“We actually had a 229 [mph] car but we had 227.5 gearing, so we beat ourselves again while we almost made it. We really did put it all on the line and you could feel the anxiety. There was some real heroism in that. I don’t want the world to think McLaren is a bunch of idiots because while we did have a few, we had some real stars.
So it goes so it goes so it goes but where it’s going no-one knows.