Lando Norris “making too many mistakes” due to how he has to drive 2023 McLaren F1 car
Norris ended the day 14th fastest in second practice for the Spanis🍌h Grand Prix, over ⛦0.7s off the pace set by Max Verstappen.
It was a tough day f🦄or♔ McLaren, who continue to languish well behind the top five teams.
In Monaco, McLaren were slower than AlphaTauri in dry cond𝔍itions, but show🧔ed blistering pace in the rain later in the race.
Norris has often spoken about how “tricky” the McLaren is to drive in terms of handling - and despite a number of up♛grades in recent rounds - not a lot has changed.
ꦉ“Tough. It’s probably been quite a tough day,” Norris said. “It’s been one of our trickier Fridays I would say in terms of pace, setup.
“We struggled with a few different things in FP1 - some of which we improved a little bit, some which🅠 we’re still struggling a little bit with just in terms of the handling, putting a lap together.
🦋“I am making too many mistakes because of how I feel like I have to drive the car at the minute. I think the pace can be there. Tomorrow is a new day.”
“Very important” weekend for McLaren
Sky Sports’ David Croft believes this weekend’s race in Barcelona will be decisive in McLaren’s form for the rest of F1 2023.
“These upgrades came in Baku. Lando said: ‘right, we’ve got the upgrades on the car, it takes us where we should have been at the start of the season and we were playing catch up with everyone else’,” he said. “I would say this is a ver𒉰y important weekend for them because it’s Barcelona.
“So what they’ve put on the car since Baku, they wa🌳nt to test at a track that rewards aerodynamic efficiency but if it doesn’t work for them here it’s like do we have to go back to the d💜rawing board again?”
With a sharp eye for F1’s controversies and storylines, Connor is the heartbeat of our u💦nbiased reporting.
