Lando Norris admits having to adapt to a “different” McLaren during Practice at the French Grand Prix.
Of the nine teams to bring upgrades this weekend, the Woking-based outfit brought the biggest package with seven new parts listed in the ‘Show and Tell’ now done on every Friday of a GP.
And while Norris showed good pace in sixth, a second off the best time set by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, he admitted the early impression was a little disappointing.
“It’s not as much as what I would dream of,” he said of the gains made. “I don’t think we expected a lot of it. We expected a small step and it’s still too early to say.
“I’ve just driven it and things feel different. Some things are a little bit better and some things we have to optimise and figure out. But yes, reasonable.”
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Norris was the only McLaren driver to do a proper ‘back-to-back’, driving the old-spec car in FP1 before having the upgrades fitted for FP2.
And pushed on the differences he felt in the updated car, he added: “Just the slight feeling you get behind the wheel, you know? You’re so sensitive, you get so used to things.
“As soon as something feels just a little bit off, you have to figure out why that’s happening, what it’s doing, what the reasoning is for it and how to overcome it and maximise it again.
“It’s nothing good or bad, it’s just the limitation of the car is in different places throughout the corner and therefore you’ve got to adapt yourself to that.
Papaya in the pit-lane. ?#FrenchGP ?? pic.twitter.com/B43RIJaVP9
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) July 22, 2022
“I guess I’m playing a little bit of catch-up and trying to understand that compared to Daniel [Ricciardo],” Norris admitted. “But at the same time, it’s been good.
“We’ve been able to compare data easily today because we chose that strategy of me not having it, him having it, and therefore we can look at the data tonight and extract more performance for tomorrow.”
As for Ricciardo, he too feels McLaren is very much in the learning phase when it comes to understanding the new parts.
“You feel it, but it’s also, we haven’t driven on this track yet as well with these cars so the reference [is] to another track,” he explained. “I do feel some differences but it’s not like a back-to-back test if you will.
“In the afternoon we made a bit of progress so that was better but I think there’s more to get out of it, so we’ll do some homework tonight.
“It felt okay,” he stated. “I think everything ran fairly smooth today so we got plenty of laps in and it wasn’t too hot in the car actually.
“On the long runs, I’m not really sure where we stand yet, I haven’t had a good look at that.
“I think I’m more worried about getting everything sorted from a set-up point of view and trying to understand that better after having had a whole day of running.”