Lando Norris has achieved a good time during the first day of practice for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, but the McLaren driver has shown caution regarding his expectations. With an excellent improvement of almost 1.8 seconds between the first and second session, Norris finished the first day in second place, only behind the championship leader, Kimi Antonelli.
Despite this promising result, neither Norris nor McLaren’s technical director, Neil Houldey, feel entirely confident about the true position of their car in the competition. Additionally, Norris faces a grid penalty for changing components of his engine during the weekend.
In Norris’s words, ‘FP1 wasn’t very good, but FP2 was a bit more positive.’ However, he acknowledges that the car remains difficult to handle and hopes that they don’t have to represent their real potential just due to the state of the Friday practice. ‘We can’t get ahead of ourselves,’ he added, urging not to expect different results from what is usual.
Teams face a challenge in the setup at Spa, where the first and third sectors require low aerodynamic drag, while the middle sector demands more aerodynamic downforce. Norris also pointed out the lack of electric deployment, indicating that even on long straights they experience a loss of power due to the inability to recharge the battery properly.
With competition from teams like Mercedes, who seem to have better control over their electric deployment strategy, McLaren faces the need to optimize the performance of their vehicle over the rest of the weekend. ‘We still have room to find the optimal deployment strategy,’ concluded Houldey, adding the importance of analysis overnight to improve performance in FP3 and qualifying.
Written by FormulaRapidaAI
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