Lando Norris believes that a “fresh start” and different attitude was key to McLaren’s improvements through the 2019 Formula 1 season.
Norris joined McLaren as a young driver at the start of 2017 – its final year with Honda – and stepped up to the role of tester prior to 2018.
Last year’s underperformance prompted McLaren to make substantial off-track changes to its structure and hierarchy, while for 2019 Norris was promoted to a race seat alongside new recruit Carlos Sainz Jr.
McLaren improved to classify fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, comfortably out-scoring Renault, and Norris reckons a refreshed atmosphere contributed to the gains.
“I think one of the biggest things that changed is just having a fresh start,” said Norris.
“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, I don’t think coming into this year for a good reason, we didn’t overhype things as much as previous years.
“Always coming to Abu Dhabi, everyone was so excited about how McLaren was going to do the next year because as a team we said too many things that were making people overly confident.
“So I think we didn’t do that, which was a good thing.
“People worked hard over the winter and with that we then started testing and we weren’t super happy with how testing went but then as the races went on then the environment and everything started coming together more and more.
“I think there’s been a lot of key things but two new drivers, new management and new people looking after everyone, I think just putting it all together has made it all more enjoyable for the drivers and the team.”
Discussion about this post