Lando Norris admitted that McLaren’s deficit to the front of the field after free practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix feels like “a little knife in the heart”.
The Woking-based squad has brought a whole host of upgrades to its MCL40 package for this weekend’s race in Baku, after Norris was cruelly denied a likely victory in Spain by a Virtual Safety Car.
Safe to say that the characteristics of the Baku circuit is not correlating to the Madring in terms of the McLaren’s performance, with Norris averaging a second-and-a-half slower than George Russell’s P1 times in FPs 1 and 2.
With concerns over the floorboard on both cars in FP1, a makeshift solution of cable ties were deployed to ensure more track time in FP2, with Norris ending the day sixth-fastest.
After the session, Norris, when asked to sum up his day’s running, was frank in his bleak assessment.
“We’re miles off,” he admitted. “I mean, we’re up there, let’s say, relative… We’re in the position we expected to be in, but at 1.5 seconds off the pace. It’s pretty pants.”
Pressed as to what his team can do to close the gap to Mercedes ahead of FP3 and qualifying on Friday, Norris confessed he had “no idea,” adding: “We’ll see what work we can do.
“The car didn’t feel that bad, so it’s just a little knife in the heart when you see how far off you are.”
Asked if he is, as a result, feeling less confident, Norris said he didn’t “really care how confident I am in the car, I just care about the pace, and we’re not very fast.”
Norris concluded: “I don’t care. I drive whatever car I get given, I just want it to be quick, and it’s not very quick at the minute. We’ll see what we can change for tomorrow.”
READ MORE – F1 2026 Azerbaijan Grand Prix – FP2 Results
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