Lando Norris expects McLaren will have a better “all-round” car with Mercedes power from 2021.
This year, the Woking-based is back working with the German manufacturer for the first time since 2014, following three years with Honda and a further three with Renault.
But while strong gains with the latter helped McLaren finish ‘best of the rest’ in the midfield in each of the past two seasons, Norris is sure switching to the best engine of the grid will provide a further step.
“I think all-round, it’s a better package,” the Briton told Motorsport.com.
“It’s more power, touch wood, it’s more reliability. It’s a slightly better-fitting package, so as just a whole, there’s a lot of positives about it.
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“I’m not into everything, so I’m sure there are maybe some negatives there, we have a good relationship with Renault, things are very smooth now and we know them, and there’s going to be a lot of new things.
“I’m sure there’s going to be some things we have to understand and we’re not going to be quite as natural with, with the mechanics and the engineers and how they understand everything. Of course, they’ll do a great job in that transition in trying to understand it.
“There’s going to be some things which are a bit trickier, but as a package, it should be much better, and that gives us good confidence it will take us that little bit further towards the top.”
So far, the new McLaren-Mercedes era appears to be going well, with technical director James Key praising their new partner.
“We’re in reasonable shape, I think,” he said on the F1 Nation podcast. “We’re where we would expect to be at this time of year, despite the obvious delays we’ve had.
“Normally we’d want to start earlier than we did, but I think we caught up well.
“The interaction with Mercedes has been fantastic; they’ve been extremely supportive, recognised the fact that we had short timescales.
“We talk to them weekly. We’ve worked with them very effectively over the past few months and I think we’re where we’d expect to be with the maturity of the engine installation and the parts that we’re already making for ’21.”
As the only team to be changing supplier, McLaren is the only team allowed to make chassis changes for this year, although limited only to the installation of the Mercedes power unit.
Like the rest, however, the team is also trying to minimise the performance loss due to aero changes which were brought in to reduce downforce.
“That’s still a work in progress,” Key explained. “We’ve had this project going for a while, although the total regulations, the aero changes for 2021 were quite late. We’re clawing it back.
“It was a reasonably big hit to begin with. Floor changes from the side profile of the floor which will be quite obvious on the 2021 car; small diffuser, rear brake ducts – they all influence a complex area of aerodynamics around the rear tyre and really it’s a case of trying to pull that back as best we can, and we are making progress every week at the moment, but there’s still some work to do.”
To commemorate their change to Mercedes engines, McLaren has confirmed their 2021 car will be called the MCL35M, with a launch date set for February 15.