Lando Norris believes that McLaren is “too far away to do anything special” in Azerbaijan and is trailing perennial 2021 rivals Ferrari.
McLaren heads Ferrari by two points in the battle for third in the standings and both teams finished on the podium at the previous event in Monaco.
Norris finished Friday as the quicker McLaren driver, in eighth position, but Ferrari classified third and fourth on the leaderboard, slower only than the Red Bull duo.
“In FP1 we were quite good, FP2 not so good,” said Norris. “Because of the temperatures or something, we were obviously expecting to be okay.
“It was only Carlos [Sainz] who said we were going to be amazing [in Baku]. I don’t have too high expectations, we look decent, we are where we expected to be.
“But [we are] quite a long way off of Ferrari and Red Bull. So hopefully tonight we can make some improvements, but we look a bit too far away to do anything special.”
Daniel Ricciardo finished the day only 13th but was within three-tenths of a second of team-mate Norris.
“I felt better in FP2,” he said. “In FP1 the scoreboard was better but in FP2 I felt like I made some more steps.
“We just have to fine tune the car and put the lap together. We had some disruptions, and a few incidents on the Softs. But nonetheless it was better, so just keep plugging away.”
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