Lando Norris isn’t getting carried away by his strong pace during Friday practice at the French Grand Prix.
The British driver finished ahead of the Red Bulls in fifth place at Paul Ricard, as hot conditions resulted in low grip and a number of drivers struggling to produce a clean lap.
A good weekend is needed for Norris, who hasn’t scored since Baku and failed to finish in two of the past three races, but he admits the level of performance he had was unexpected.
“It is a bit of surprise; the team and I didn’t think the track would suit as much as Canada,” he said via Crash.net.
“As a team, we still did a good job with the pace being very promising, but we said that as well in Canada and it didn’t turn out too well on Saturday.
“So it has been a good day, the speed looked pretty good, but the car is not quite there yet in terms of what we can achieve.
“So put everything together tomorrow and hopefully everybody stays behind us.”
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Teammate Carlos Sainz backed up his teammate in seventh, splitting the two Red Bulls, but explained why he was less than satisfied with his McLaren.
“You know it has been a good day when you are not happy with the car and suffering out there with different issues, and you are still P7,” the Spaniard stated.
“That gives good confidence for Saturday as we still need to change quite a lot of things because we were running a lot of experimental parts, changing floors, changing a lot of stuff on the car to see where the performance is.
“Hopefully tomorrow we can put together all the good pieces and have a better day. I don’t understand yet. We need to do some analyse,” Sainz added.
“Today we were strong, but I will see that this track suits our car whenever we qualify P6 or P7. Until then, after Friday it is very difficult to tell.”