Lando Norris insisted McLaren’s pre-race doubts over their performance in China were sincere after scoring their best result of the season so far in Shanghai.
Aided by a Safety Car interruption which was well-timed for his strategy, Norris took second place between the two Red Bull drivers in the grand prix. He also qualified on pole position for the sprint race but sank to sixth after making a poor start.He said the team’s performance in the grand prix was a “big improvement” compared to Saturday’s race, but nonetheless “probably not” the best the car has felt all season. “So think that’s why we were probably a bit surprised,” he said.
Before the race weekend began Norris predicted the Shanghai track would not suit McLaren’s car, especially its long, constant-radius turns one, two and 13.
Norris was “surprised” to finish the race second “but it’s a nice surprise of course.
“It’s difficult to say. We’ve been struggling a little bit, I’m sure everyone does, with certain things throughout the whole season, which have always been limiting us. It probably felt similar-ish to Australia. In Australia I felt comfortable and the car felt pretty good as well.
“It was just much better [in the grand prix], things came alive, the conditions cooled down, the wind calmed down and both of these things, I think, played into our hands a little bit more.”
After the sprint race Norris thought McLaren would be “nowhere near top-three” in the grand prix. “Even maybe top five.”
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The Shanghai circuit was treated was a sealant before the F1 weekend began. That plus the wet conditions on Friday meant the racing surface changed significantly over the three days of running and grip levels varied across the circuit. Norris said there were specific points on the circuit where the MCL38 performed better than they predicted.
“The places we expected to struggle a lot more, we didn’t struggle as much in. These longer corners, like turn one, have always been a big weakness for us, and part of turn one was probably better than we were expecting. The second part was probably as we were expecting.
“So it’s just that we’re still learning about the car. It’s as simple as that.
“This track is very different. The Tarmac is quite odd, maybe that played into our hands a bit more than we were thinking. Maybe with the old Tarmac we would have struggled a bit more. So it’s just little things.”
Although the Safety Car played into Norris’ hands, he had strong pace compared to the Ferraris and Perez. He insisted the team never saw that coming.
“We’re not making it up. We’re giving our honest opinion on where we want to be. I think if we go into a weekend and we knew we’re going to be strong, we’ve said it.
“More often than not we don’t feel that optimistic because all year we’ve been behind Red Bull, all year we’ve been behind Ferrari, there’s no reason for us to suddenly think we should be ahead. Nothing really pointed to us having an amazing race, especially the sprint race, which was our best kind of version of events of what can go down.
“Things just went to plan and kind of went very smoothly from that point onwards. I didn’t make a mistake in turn one and go off, it’s a good start, got past the Aston and then you can just control the race. And that was very different to [the sprint race].”
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