Lando Norris says that McLaren’s run to fifth place at the Australian Grand Prix was worse than expected, as it believed it could fight against Mercedes during the race.
McLaren has endured a difficult start to the 2022 season, but in Melbourne, it had its most competitive weekend to date.
Norris crossed the finish line in fifth place, while team-mate Daniel Ricciardo followed him close behind in sixth.
With Mercedes finishing third and fourth, Norris admits that the team thought it had the pace to fight against the reigning World Champions in the early stages of the grand prix.
“It was worse [than expected]. I guess we wanted to fight the Mercedes a bit more than we did,” Norris said.
“Their pace was quite a bit stronger than ours. Maybe not as much as it looked because we had a couple of issues which cost us a lot of time, but not enough that would’ve made us finish ahead of the Mercedes.
“They just had a quicker car than we did today. I’m still happy, fifth and sixth is still a great result.
“I guess it would be worse if both Ferraris were ahead of us, and both Red Bulls. We capitalised on failures of others but I guess it’s still some good points, so happy with that.”
Norris clarified during the weekend that McLaren’s gains in Melbourne were mostly down to the car suiting the track, a statement he reiterated following the race.
“We just need to keep working on our weaknesses if we want to be here more often,” he said.
“Not all tracks are as smooth and quick as this. So I think this might be as good as it gets for a while, and we’re going to go to a couple of tracks which might be a bit tougher for us.
“I don’t think we can be too unhappy. We have to be happy with the job we did.
“The car we had today is basically the same car as we had in Bahrain. We’ve not changed too much.”
