Lando Norris hails the improvements that McLaren made as the F1 2023 season progressed, while noting that there were jitters.
The way McLaren started the F1 2023 season, it wasn’t a good sight as they struggled even to get out of Q1. Already around the season start, team boss Andrea Stella admitted about few things going in the wrong direction in the winter.
But he also noted about things being put in place for them to improve as the season progressed. Even though there was optimism, Norris admits that they were 50-50 on it since sometimes updates don’t work out as they are supposed to.
But this year, McLaren managed to improve more than what they have done before. “The beginning was tough because I didn’t how..like I thought it was going to be whole year in a way,” said Norris to media. “We didn’t know how much we are going to improve especially the very beginning, of course we said we will be a bit patient and we have some decent things coming but in the past few years when you had decent things coming, they have not always stood up to be that much of an improvement.
“This year was quite the opposite and it stood out to be a bigger improvement than we expected but it was tough because you never want to start the season kind of thinking…you never want to start the season thinking: ‘Wow, 23 races to go and I can’t even get out of Q1!’, it is just sort of thinking and knowing that so early on in the season. It just makes you think that it’s going to be a hell of a long year,” summed up Norris.
But this also has some positive aspects as Norris explains. He reckons such times helps them to realise the small things that one needs to improve which goes under the radar when they have a good car at their disposal. Those things are over-shadowed.
This is what they managed to do where they looked at things which they normally wouldn’t. “I think what set us up very well is that it made everyone work very hard to try and achieve everything you could with a bad car, which then set us up very nicely for when we eventually had a good car,” continued Norris.
“We’ve been one of the best teams, maybe not in Las Vegas, but certainly maximising points every weekend, reliability and everything else on top of just having a quick car. I think being in a bad position at the start of the year helps. You realise sometimes that when you’re quick, a lot of things are easy and they come easily.
“You kind of forget sometimes the smaller things when you’re struggling and every kind of thing become more important and therefore you utlise it more, so then when you have a quick car, you kind of utilising everything, so I think it set us up nicely. But then there’s other things you have got to prepare for when you’re fighting at the top, it’s a different race when you’re fighting there compared to at the back,” summed up Norris.
And eventually when the updates came and it worked, Norris and the team breathed a sigh of relief. He regards this as the best improvement he has seen in the last 10 years. This also made him emotional after seeing the efforts behind the scenes.
“Emotionally proud of the whole team that they did such a big turnaround,” said Norris. “One of the biggest turnarounds in probably the last 10 years in a period of time when it’s more difficult than ever because of wind tunnel time and costs and all of these things. For us to do that against Mercedes, who dominated F1 a few years ago for 5-6 years, against Ferrari who have always been one of the best teams to catch up.
“And with Red Bull who have had the most dominant car and team combo almost ever in F1, for us to be close at some races at beating them is quite impressive and a great achievement for everyone in the team, so proud and very happy because we didn’t expect it I’m proud and I’m very happy because I think we didn’t expect it to be so good. We know we can definitely get more out of it once you have a bit of a winter, so very, very happy with everyone,” summed up Norris.
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