With third place on the grid for Lando Norris, many McLaren fans were hoping for big points at the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Spain, but after the Brit had to pit on the first lap with a damaged front wing, the race was actually over ran.
At turn two of the first lap, Norris tried to move inside alongside Lewis Hamilton, but the Mercedes driver cut slightly into Norris’ line, causing the inevitable contact. When the McLaren driver came back after his stop at the end of the field, he was not necessarily able to convince with great pace, which suggests that it would have been a difficult race for McLaren anyway.
When asked if he would have made it into the points without the damage at the start, Norris simply said: “Probably not.” The data from the race, which we have from the technology company ‘PACETEQ’, confirms this impression. Despite mostly free driving, only one team was slower than McLaren in the race, namely Williams.
Norris: Let’s not fool ourselves…
“We’re just way too slow, and we’ve been all year,” said the 23-year-old, venting his displeasure. “I don’t know, there’s nothing else to say. [Im Qualifying] the cars were no different than usual, it was just a special day.”
“Some good teams struggled a lot and some of the worse teams did a better job so it was just a weird day where people made a lot of mistakes and we took advantage of that. Other than that we were all season weren’t up to par and were struggling to finish in the points in half the races.”
“And [in Spanien] it was like that again. It was to be expected that we would have a very difficult day. We’re nowhere near as fast as Alpine, Aston or any of those top five or top six teams, so there’s no point in thinking we’d have finished in the points because we’re just not fast enough.”
Norris reacts irritably to journalists’ questions
After the race, Norris is visibly annoyed by further questions. “How frustrating it is that the new [Baku-]Updates don’t show their effect?” a journalist asked, to which Norris replies irritably: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There are no new parts. I don’t know where you got that from.”
“There’s nothing new. Just little things. If there’s something new, you’d see it on a piece of paper and we’d say there’s something new. We had an upgrade in Baku and that was it.”
Alright, next question: “Did McLaren take anything that gives hope for the upcoming race in Canada?” Norris replies, “I don’t know, I’m just hoping for rain. That’s what we need, nothing more.”
Norris: The Baku update didn’t change much in terms of performance
When asked again about the general development direction of the McLaren MCL60, Norris says: “I think Baku, as we said 100 times at the time, is just a different direction that we are taking with the underbody, a different philosophy. And we haven’t said it would do us a lot.”
“It’s gotten us maybe half a tenth to a maximum of a tenth, and a lot of other teams have brought upgrades that they’ve used in recent races, but we haven’t. And yes, we don’t expect any more than what we’re doing now.”
“We’re doing our best to finish in the points and if we can do that it’s been a great day for us. But the expectation is that we’re not going to finish in the points at the moment. That’s the way it is. And they Next upgrades won’t come until Silverstone so until then we’ll just have to keep doing our best, it’s that simple.”
McLaren Team Principal: Qualifying distorted true pace
McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella is also unsurprised that the McLaren MCL60’s race pace was disappointing at Barcelona, although the Italian reckons Lando Norris could have scored small points.
“I think Lando could have been in the group with Zhou and Tsunoda, right behind the Aston Martin. I think we would have been in that group. Ahead or behind, I’m not sure. But I don’t think we would have been able to compete with the Aston Martin today.”
“I think we do too [nach dem Qualifying] remained realistic because I thought that the conditions were very special and suited our car exceptionally well, and I also think that some of our competitors just didn’t deliver enough. After all, we were ahead of Russell, Hamilton, Perez and Leclerc.”
“In the end we just didn’t have enough pace,” explains Stella. “But at the same time tire degradation was also quite high, which could be the opposite of the fact that the car had new tyres [im Qualifying] seems to be preparing well and that’s obviously something we need to improve on if we want to stay in the race in hotter conditions.”