Lando Norris has explained why he is unable to quantify whether his upturn of fortunes in his Formula 1 season is down to a general upturn in form, or his new McLaren front suspension.
The Briton is now firmly back in the championship race after winning the British Grand Prix, narrowing the gap to team-mate Oscar Piastri to just eight points.
His newfound form coincided with the implementation of a new front suspension, which was introduced with the intention of giving Norris more feeling through corners.
McLaren has said that it believes Norris has been given a benefit from it, but when asked after his Silverstone triumph, he said that perhaps the talk around it has been overhyped.
“You sound more positive than I still am,” he joked to media including Motorsport Week. “Yeah. It could be worse. It could have made it… people talk about it probably too much.
“That’s just my honest opinion. It could be that it’s helping me, and when I say helping, it’s helping me by hundredths, thousandths, I don’t know.
“It’s impossible to numerically put a number on it. Like I said in previous interviews, it’s something the team believed might give me more feeling, and I just roll with that, I believe.
“My faith in the team and my belief in them thinking this might help. Not a guarantee, but it might. And that’s it.
“Yes, I won two races since. I was real quick in Canada. I’m not going to say it’s down to that, obviously.
“I want to put more of it down to my hard work, my work I’ve been doing away from the track, with my team, with many people that I have around me.
“I put it way more down to that than some alterations on the suspension.
“At the same time, I could just say I think I could have achieved the same thing without it and just going back to our previous spec. So, I don’t know.”
Comparison test ‘might or might not’ give Norris conclusive answer
Norris added that he would be keen to compare both at a test at some point to satisfy his own curiosity.
“Hopefully, one day we get to back-to-back test it and I might get a feeling, I might not,” he continued.
“My feelings have been good over the last few races, but I think more of that’s come from just my working on trying to get better feelings and maximising lack of feelings in certain areas more than it has been by so many improvements from a car point of view.”
Norris also praised the McLaren team for improving the all-conquering MCL39 even more, citing the distance of his back-to-back wins in Spielberg and Silverstone as proof.
“But we’ve improved the car. We’ve had upgrades last weekend, things like that, and that helps,” he explained.
“We won by what, 30 seconds here. We won by 20 seconds last weekend, so the car’s pretty damn good.
“I want to put it more down to my hard work rather than that, but it’s a combination of both.”
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