Norris rues McLaren mistake which leaves them chasing rivals
Norris rues McLaren mistake which leaves them chasing rivals
Lando Norris has been left frustrated by where McLaren is in the pecking order heading into the 2023 F1 season and he admits mistakes in pre-season development led to the performance shortfall seen during testing.
McLaren has ambitions of breaking into the top three eventually but instead of sitting on the cusp of doing that, last week's three-day testing period in Sakhir would suggest that the team will be struggling among the bottom half of the grid, rather than challenging the leading trio with Alpine and Aston Martin.
For Norris, a driver with a lot of talent and big ambitions, it's not where he wanted to be heading into the new season.
The 23-year-old admitted that the team leaned too hard into the wrong development pathway and it has left them playing catch-up heading into the new season.
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"You always just go in a direction," said Norris. "When you find something, you kind of head in that direction and so on. We maybe didn't explore as many paths as we should have done and then once we did get onto the right path, it's just been a little bit too late. Simple as that.
"So I guess we're in a race against other teams and are optimistic and we want to fight back to being a top team. It's just frustrating that we found it just that little bit too late. But that's all it is. Every team does it at times."
Last week, a lot of time was lost by McLaren having to strengthen and repair weak wheel brows and some pundits have speculated that they may be significantly closer to the bottom than the top pace-wise too.
Norris though, isn't getting too downbeat, although he admitted the full potential of the car may not be seen until the latter part of the season.
"I don't think we're in a terrible place as it is," he said. "We're maybe not as strong as we want to be but not as bad as as maybe what some people are expecting.
"I don't want to speak too early because at the same time we're just waiting to see how we're gonna do but we have some some good things in the pipeline so I look forward to all of that.
"It's a plan, we also have to execute [it] and make sure they work properly and so on. It's a long season so I look forward to to the latter part [of the season]."
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F1 Standings
Drivers
- Charles Leclerc
- Carlos Sainz
- Lando Norris
- Oscar Piastri
- Pierre Gasly
- Esteban Ocon
- Sergio Pérez
- Max Verstappen
- Alexander Albon
- Logan Sargeant
- Lewis Hamilton
- George Russell
- Nico Hülkenberg
- Kevin Magnussen
- Fernando Alonso
- Lance Stroll
- Valtteri Bottas
- Zhou Guanyu
- Nyck De Vries
- Liam Lawson
- Daniel Ricciardo
- Yuki Tsunoda
Races
- Gulf Air Grand Prix of Bahrain 2023
- Saudi Arabian Grand Prix 2023
- Grand Prix of Australia 2023
- Grand Prix of China 2023
- Grand Prix of Azerbaijan 2023
- Miami Grand Prix 2023
- Qatar Airways Gran Premio Del Made In Italy E Dell'emilia Romagna 2023
- Grand Prix of Monaco 2023
- AWS Gran Premio de España 2023
- Grand Prix du Canada 2023
- Grand Prix of Austria 2023
- Aramco Grand Prix of Great Britain 2023
- Grand Prix of Hungary 2023
- Grand Prix of Belgium 2023
- Heineken Dutch Grand Prix 2023
- Grand Prix of Italy 2023
- Grand Prix of Singapore 2023
- Grand Prix of Japan 2023
- Qatar Grand Prix 2023
- Grand Prix of the United States 2023
- Gran Premio de la Ciudad de Mexico 2023
- Rolex Grande Prêmio de São Paulo 2023
- Heineken Silver Las Vegas Grand Prix 2023
- Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi 2023
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