A “fresh start” and a more realistic perspective helped McLaren to their best season since 2014, Lando Norris claims.
The Woking-based outfit scored more than 100 points and stood on the podium for the first time since their last year as Mercedes customers en route to their best championship position, fourth, since finishing third in 2012.
What was particularly notable was how all this happened despite a drastic amount of change impacting McLaren but actually, the Briton believes it was exactly what was needed.
“I think one of the biggest things that changed is just having a fresh start,” Norris told Crash.net
“Two new drivers, new people within the team, new management with Andreas [Seidl] coming in.
“There were a lot of changes in the team which kind of refreshed everything but also at the same time because the last few years had been so bad – coming into this year for a good reason – we didn’t overhype things as much as previous years.”
Indeed, with Fernando Alonso often making bold claims, Lando revealed: “Always coming to Abu Dhabi, everyone was so excited about how McLaren was going to do the following year because as a team we said too many things that were making people overly confident. We didn’t do that, which was a good thing.”
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McLaren boss Andreas Seidl didn’t officially take over the reins until the Spanish Grand Prix but his approach has also been praised for helping the team make the gains it has.
But he also sent a lot of praise back towards Norris for how he approached his first year in F1.
“For Lando as a rookie, it is clear to see that he was simply building it up over the course of the season,” the German said via Racer.
“He was quick straight out of the box in Melbourne, he went into his first-ever qualifying and ended up in Q3, which proved that it was the right choice to go for him and showed what a talent he is.
“At the same time, it’s normal that he took his time also in order to build up experience and get more and more aggressive in the races. Especially the race starts, where he took it more conservatively at the beginning of the season.
“Then I would say from the second half onwards he was a complete F1 race driver, because when you see the starts that he has done, how he’s doing the races, it’s impressive. He was simply a bit unlucky with technical issues and so on, which were many times in the way of big results.”
Instead, most of the standout results went to teammate Carlos Sainz, who finished sixth in the Drivers’ standings having replaced Alonso for 2019.
“On Carlos’s side, the situation was a bit different,” Seidl added.
“He was new to the team but you could see that he already has some experience with other teams. So it was important from the first test last year to help develop the car together with the engineers, to give a clear direction.
“He simply was there over the course of the entire season — in both qualifying and the races — and the result you see in the number of points he scored.
“Also, we have to keep in mind we also had races where we lost good points with him with technical issues.
“When you look at the result of the qualifying, for example, to have 11-10 (in favour of Norris), it’s something that is great for me to see because it simply confirms that we have two top, quick drivers.”
