Lando Norris notes of Ferrari making the biggest step from F1 2023 to 2024, while adds on McLaren being there too and not dropping back.
While Red Bull has retained its top spot from F1 2023 to 2024, the order behind hasn’t changed hugely as well with Ferrari still knocking the door. The positive thing is the Italian manufacturer’s pace and tyre management improvements.
It is noticeable and they have already picked up a win in the third race rather than last year when they took much longer to secure a victory. As per McLaren’s Norris, Ferrari have taken a big step from where they were in 2023 when compared to 2024.
He doesn’t discounts McLaren in the order but as per him, it is certainly Red Bull and Ferrari ahead. McLaren are close too and slightly ahead of Mercedes and Aston Martin, with a big scope of improvement to come which makes him smile about the future.
“The gap to Red Bull is completely expected,” said Norris to media. “If you look when they stopped developing last year, they put a lot of time and effort into trying to develop a good car for this year. For us, to be still as close as we are to them, it is a good sign. You would probably say the most impressive has been Ferrari in how they’ve been able to take a very big step, I would say, probably one of the biggest steps from last year to this year.
“But for us to still be not far behind. I think it’s a completely a good sign for us. Of course we always hope for that little bit more and we hope to just come out and be able to fight straight away at the front but we took a step and we weren’t able to maybe tackle a few of things that we really have struggled to tackle in the last few years. But now more than ever we’re trying to tackle those areas.
“There’s still plenty of races at the end of last year that we were not even close to being the second fastest team. In Abu Dhabi, we were not even close to being second fastest team or third fastest team or even fourth. So I would never say yeah, we were the second fastest and now Ferrari have jumped us or anything like this.
“I want to believe that we maybe have a slightly better all round package but I don’t think we’ve visited some tracks yet where we’ve seen as many weaknesses like Zandvoort, for example – not looking forward to it. And a couple of tracks that really show where the car is weak. So on the whole, I’m very happy.
“Can I be happier? Yes. Can we all? Yes, because we always want more, we always want to be able to compete a bit higher. But I think for us to start the season in such a solid position, knowing that we can still improve on so many areas, its a smile on my face, because we’re in a good position and we know we can get a lot better still.
“So if you think back to 12 months ago, it was still a very, very different situation to be in. So we’ve out developed our competitors, since this time last year by a huge step. It gets harder and harder to do that the closer you get to the top, but still plenty of things for us to do. So I’m happy with the step we made as a team. And I’m very happy at the work ethic and the effort everyone’s putting into trying to continue,” summed up Norris.
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