Lando Norris was left depressed after the running in FP1 and FP2 as the McLaren was around one and a half seconds slower than the benchmark time set by Mercedes’ George Russell. Coming into Baku as the form man, Norris has been on pole in 3 of the last four races, winning two of them.
He would have cruised to a win at Madrid, but the poorly timed VSC ruined his race. Coming into Baku, McLaren has introduced a mega upgrade package in what is one of its last attempts to develop the current challenger.
On Thursday, the team trialled the new package, and even though there were glimpses of strong performance at times from both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, by the end of the session, it was the Mercedes duo that topped the session.
Talking to the media, including Sportskeeda, after the running on Thursday, Lando Norris appeared downbeat when talking about McLaren’s performance levels. According to the Brit, the gap to the top was like a knife through the heart, and even though there doesn’t seem to be much wrong with the car, the gap is shockingly big. He said,
“We’re miles off, I mean, we’re up there, let’s say, relative. We’re in a position we expect to be in, but like 1.5 seconds off the pace, so pretty pants. I have no idea, so we’ll see what work we can do tonight. The car doesn’t feel that bad. It’s a little knife in the heart when you see how far off you are.”
Lando Norris not too bothered with the comfort level with the McLaren
With McLaren bringing a raft of upgrades to the car for Baku, it’s always tough to see how big an impact they have on the overall performance. Lando Norris’ verdict about how the car felt continued to be positive, but the driver reiterated that, for him, the most important thing was not how the car felt but how fast it was. He said,
“I don’t really care how confident I am in the car. I just care about the pace, and we’re not very fast. So I don’t care, I drive whatever car I get given. I just want it to be quick, and it’s not very quick at the minute, but we’ll see what we can change for tomorrow.”
With Baku being a track with multiple long straights, it does appear that the track favours cars like Mercedes, and we could see a pecking order similar to what we had in Monza. The McLaren duo finished off the podium in that race and would be hoping for a better run this time around.
Edited by Charanjot Singh Kohli