Lando Norris attributed McLaren’s improved one-lap performance at the Australian Grand Prix to the track characteristics rather than developments to its Formula 1 car.
Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri provisionally qualified in a team season-best fourth and sixth before Sergio Perez’s three-place drop moved them up one spot each.
Prior to that, Piastri had fronted a third-row lockout in Saudi Arabia, while the roles were reversed with Norris ahead as McLaren shared the fourth row back in Bahrain.
Although Norris is mindful McLaren has made minor improvements to the MCL38, he credits other factors to its strong showing at the unorthodox Albert Park Circuit.
“I think we’ve improved in a couple of small areas,” Norris said. “There’s always things every weekend you try and bring to the car to help improve a little bit.
“I think we’ve maximised ourselves and maybe others have maximised themselves.
“It’s just a slightly different layout of the circuit, potentially played into our favour a little bit more than some others. Nothing more than that.
“If we went back to Saudi now, we’re not going to do any differently to what we did.
“[Albert Park is] a different track layout, different tarmac, just different weekends.”
While McLaren had the measure over Mercedes and Aston Martin, Norris admits there’s still a gap to bridge to the ultimate pacesetters in Red Bull and Ferrari.
Perez’s penalty aside, McLaren was helped in its quest to beat Aston Martin when Fernando Alonso’s gravel trap excursion compromised his Q3 efforts and Charles Leclerc’s mistake on his final run enabled Norris to beat at least one Ferrari – but the gap to pole position still looks to far to reach in the British driver’s mind.
“It’s been clear that I would say from today that we’ve been a little bit ahead of our main competitors,” he added.
“[But] Sixth to pole is still quite far. Half a second on a 1.16s lap is quite a bit. But it can easily be gained and lost quite quickly.
“There’s a few places the Red Bull is very quick but easy to make mistakes and things like that, like you saw with Carlos [Sainz].
“Carlos was probably close to being off the pole and he made one big mistake in the middle sector and kind of lost everything.
“And even with Charles [Leclerc], he’s been quicker than us all weekend and he’s suddenly behind me.
“Maybe some people didn’t maximise their result, but I think at the same time we did and we also just have a good car this weekend, certainly better than previous weekends.”
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