Lando Norris gets unapologetically honest about Mclaren’s situation this year as he claims they could be further down in the grid.
McLaren entered Saudi Arabia with little hope. But Lando Norris tried to make the most out of his minimal resources. Starting from P11, the Briton almost finished P6 until Esteban Ocon overtook him in the last lap. Thus, Norris had to settle with a P7.
Esteban Ocon and Lando Norris drag race to line.#Formula1 #F1 #SaudiaArabianGP #McLaren #Alpine pic.twitter.com/CoJWJJRndv
— Formula One Clips (@f1_liveclips) March 27, 2022
Nevertheless, it was a good result by him, as McLaren’s problems are far larger. Despite that, he managed to rank himself four places above. It was commendable.
However, Norris claims that had it been not a track with fast corners like Bahrain, they would have been way down. He further claims that with the current setup, this is the ceiling of McLaren, and from here, they can only go down until some improvements are made.
“No, the only way is not up,” said Norris during his post-race interview. “For us, it can only be down. I love to be positive, but on slow speed, we are really bad, we’re a long long way off.”
“Bahrain was evidence of that, so when we come to a track here (Jeddah), we can show more speed than our car got in medium and high speed corners.”
“That’s where we were strong today and could catch Esteban. But if we go on slow-speed corners, we’ll struggle a lot more. We expect that and know that.”
Also read: Former F1 driver advises Daniel Ricciardo on how to salvage struggling McLaren this season
Lando Norris is going to lose in Monza
McLaren had a double podium party in Monza last year, including the win. When talking about how McLaren can do better at high-speed corners, the reporter said it could be Monza.
However, Norris interjected that there are some slow corners and longer straights in Monza, and Norris admits McLaren is bad at both areas.
Also read: Daniel Ricciardo does not think McLaren can score points in coming races at the moment
