{"id":264243,"date":"2026-09-24T19:30:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/24\/pretty-pants-lando-norris-delivers-his-verdict-about-mclarens-pace-at-baku-after-thursdays-running-at-f1-azerbaijan-gp\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T19:30:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:30:56","slug":"pretty-pants-lando-norris-delivers-his-verdict-about-mclarens-pace-at-baku-after-thursdays-running-at-f1-azerbaijan-gp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/24\/pretty-pants-lando-norris-delivers-his-verdict-about-mclarens-pace-at-baku-after-thursdays-running-at-f1-azerbaijan-gp\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Pretty Pants&#8221;: Lando Norris delivers his verdict about McLaren&#8217;s pace at Baku after Thursday&#8217;s running at F1 Azerbaijan GP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-content\" data-postid=\"5221144\" data-slug-id=\"2840677\">\n<div class=\"vidazoo-player-container\">\n<span class=\"vidazoo-close-btn  hidden \"><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>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&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportskeeda.com\/player\/george-russell\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-is-sponsored=\"false\">George Russell<\/a>. Coming into Baku as the form man, Norris has been on pole in 3 of the last four races, winning two of them.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, the team trialled the new package, and even though there were glimpses of strong performance at times from both Lando Norris and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportskeeda.com\/player\/oscar-piastri\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-is-sponsored=\"false\">Oscar Piastri<\/a>, by the end of the session, it was the Mercedes duo that topped the session.<\/p>\n<p><template id=\"also-read-articles-template\"><\/p>\n<p><\/template><\/p>\n<p>Talking to the media, including Sportskeeda, after the running on Thursday, Lando Norris appeared downbeat when talking about McLaren&#8217;s performance levels. According to the Brit, the gap to the top was like a knife through the heart, and even though there doesn&#8217;t seem to be much wrong with the car, the gap is shockingly big. He said,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWe&#8217;re miles off, I mean, we&#8217;re up there, let&#8217;s say, relative. We&#8217;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&#8217;ll see what work we can do tonight. The car doesn&#8217;t feel that bad. It&#8217;s a little knife in the heart when you see how far off you are.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Lando Norris not too bothered with the comfort level with the McLaren<\/h2>\n<p>With McLaren bringing a raft of upgrades to the car for Baku, it&#8217;s always tough to see how big an impact they have on the overall performance. Lando Norris&#8217; 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,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI don&#8217;t really care how confident I am in the car. I just care about the pace, and we&#8217;re not very fast. So I don&#8217;t care, I drive whatever car I get given. I just want it to be quick, and it&#8217;s not very quick at the minute, but we&#8217;ll see what we can change for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-post-rating-widget\">\n<p><template id=\"post-rating-feedback-modal-template\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-rating-feedback-feedback-box\">\n<div class=\"post-rating-feedback-content\">\n<div class=\"post-rating-feedback-data\">\n<p>Why did you not like this content?<\/p>\n<p><textarea id=\"dislike-feedback-text\" rows=\"4\" placeholder=\"Please type your feedback...\"\/>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\n<button class=\"close\">Cancel<\/button><br \/>\n<button class=\"submit\">Submit<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/template><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-rating-widget-parent hidden\">\n<div class=\"rating-parent-container\">\n<div class=\"rating-content-holder\">\n<p>Was this article helpful?<\/p>\n<div class=\"post-rating-action-container\">\n<div class=\"like-container\">\n<button class=\"post-rating-like-button post-rating-button\" data-action=\"like\" title=\"like article\"><br \/>\n<img class=\"post-like-image post-rating-image\" data-lazy=\"\/\/staticg.sportskeeda.com\/like-articles\/upvote-icon-grey.svg\" height=\"20\" width=\"20\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"like selected\"\/><br \/>\n<\/button>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"dislike-container\">\n<button class=\"post-rating-dislike-button post-rating-button\" data-action=\"dislike\" title=\"dislike article\"><br \/>\n<img class=\"post-dis-like-image post-rating-image\" data-lazy=\"\/\/staticg.sportskeeda.com\/like-articles\/upvote-icon-grey.svg\" height=\"20\" width=\"20\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"avatar selected\"\/><br \/>\n<\/button>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\nThank You for feedback\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"tag-cloud\">\n<div class=\"tags-text\">\n<div class=\"scrollable-content-holder  article-padding\">\n<p class=\"article-p  \">Quick Links<\/p>\n<p><button id=\"pnAdvancerLeft\" class=\"pn-Advancer pn-Advancer_Left \" type=\"button\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"background: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/staticg.sportskeeda.com\/skm\/assets\/article\/article-scroll-left.svg\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n<\/button><\/p>\n<nav id=\"pnProductNav\" class=\"pn-ProductNav\">\n<\/nav>\n<p><button id=\"pnAdvancerRight\" class=\"pn-Advancer pn-Advancer_Right \" type=\"button\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"background: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/staticg.sportskeeda.com\/skm\/assets\/article\/article-scroll-right.svg\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n<\/button>\n<\/div>\n<p>More from Sportskeeda<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\n<span class=\"publisher-name\">Edited by Charanjot Singh Kohli<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportskeeda.com\/f1\/news-pretty-pants-lando-norris-delivers-verdict-mclaren-s-pace-baku-thursday-s-running-f1-azerbaijan-gp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217; 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. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":264244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6806],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-264243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gossip"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}