Lando Norris has pointed out on things McLaren needs to better ahead of the 2020 F1 season, to be able to remain ahead of the midfield pack.
With his rookie season behind him, Norris has spelled out areas of weakness within McLaren that requires attention, if the team hope to prosper again in the 2020 F1 season. After years of troubles, they finished fourth in 2019, with a podium to its name.
But everything wasn’t right for McLaren still as they pull back into the top half of the championship. More specifically, Norris said that more downforce will be key to finding success next year, as the team hope to build off their success from the year of the pig.
“Downforce, is it as simple as that,” started Norris, when asked by media including FormulaRapida.net, for what they have to do. “Downforce is always the biggest thing. And it’s one of the things that it has improved so much from last year.
“It’s not just having more downforce, but efficiency, the characteristics of the car. The car still needs to work in different conditions, different winds, different cornering types, different speeds. In addition, things from our side like the pit stops is also there.
“Plus, we need to improve our driving too and our efficiency as how we work as a team, but also with the car. The car suits some tracks a lot and some tracks not at all and it is now to try and make the car suit ideally both types of tracks.
“Maybe not so much suit one type of track, but also be then more competitive in the tracks we suffered in a lot more. So characteristics of how the car works and so on is the biggest base to improve.” It was the case for both McLaren and Renault in F1 2019.
But the former managed to have better reliability and performance. Paying closer attention to F1 2019, though, Norris said that their new driver line-up, and fresh management in the form of Andreas Seidl and James Key contributed to their best-of-the-rest finish.
“I think one of the biggest things that’s changed is just having a fresh start, with two new drivers,” said Norris. “In addition to that, new people within the team and new management, I guess, with Andreas coming in [as well].
“Basically, a lot of changes within the team which kind of refreshed everything, but at the same time, because the last two years have been so bad, I don’t think coming into this year, for a good reason, we over-hyped as many things as in previous years.
“We were always coming into Abu Dhabi with excitement about how McLaren were going to do the next year because as a team, we said too many things which will making people overly confident. So I think we didn’t do that, which was a good thing.
“People then worked hard over the winter and with that, we then started testing and we weren’t super happy with how testing went. But then as the race weekends went on, then the environment and everything started coming together more and more.
“So I think there has been a lot of key things – two new drivers, new management, new people looking after everyone. I think just putting everything together has made it all more enjoyable for the drivers, but also enjoyable for the team.”
Here’s James Key on McLaren’s new F1 simulator
Here’s Lando Norris on feeling frustrated at certain point
Here’s Zak Brown denouncing Lando Norris-Mercedes deal
Here’s Lando Norris on why he thinks 2019 was the apt year for F1 debut
Here’s Carlos Sainz on McLaren season
The story was written by Duncan Leahy and edited by Darshan Chokhani
