Lando Norris reckons every team is “quite even” behind Formula 1’s leading three contenders to the extent that McLaren has to see last year’s backmarker Haas as a rival.
McLaren endured a subdued three-day test in Bahrain due to brake-related issues, with Norris taking on the entirety of the running due to Daniel Ricciardo contracting Covid-19.
It meant McLaren finished bottom of the mileage charts across the three days of running.
Haas set the second-fastest time overall, courtesy of Mick Schumacher, albeit in the cooler conditions in which it was exclusively able to run due to its previous freight issues.
“The three teams there are looking the fastest at the minute and I would say everyone else is looking pretty close, from us, down to Haas,” said Norris after testing.
“Even Haas looked very quick, [which is] surprising considering how far off they were last year and impressed to see the progress they look like they’ve made so far.
“I think even we need to be prepared to be racing against them and qualifying against them so we’ll see next week.”
Norris says McLaren was still able to gain understanding of its MCL36 but that it is on the back foot in terms of performance on older tyres and higher fuel.
“It’s been so-so, could have been a lot better, definitely wasn’t our smoothest of tests, the problems made our life difficult to do the laps we wanted to do,” he said.
“We could do one-two-lap runs so we understand the tyres when they’re new and fresh but when they’re older on high fuel we don’t understand as much because we didn’t have the chance to test it.
“[It was] good, but many areas we’re behind on compared to other teams that we’ll have to focus on next week.”
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