Lando Norris believes that assumptions McLaren has endured a poor start to the 2023 Formula 1 season based on its points record are wide of the mark.
Having openly admitted over the winter it had missed development targets with its MCL60 car, the Woking outfit ended the first two races of the year without a point to its name for the first time since 2017.
McLaren finally got off the mark with a double points score in Australia and more positives followed as it brought a revised package – one Norris described as “what we should have started the year with” – to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix last weekend.
Although McLaren only came away from Baku with two points, both Norris and Oscar Piastri qualified inside the top 10 as a sign the team had made a sizeable step forward with its 2023 challenger.
Norris, who ended up 9th at the close of Sunday’s race, asserts that McLaren’s tally of 14 points has not been reflective of the car’s potential and is confident the updates have provided a better baseline to work from.
Asked if Baku felt like the real start of McLaren’s season, Norris said: “The season started a few races ago, but I guess we were playing a little bit of catch-up from where we should have been, honestly.
“I think we have a good, let’s say, baseline to really work from now, more confidence to be able to work from where we are. But we’ve not had a bad year.
“I know people keep saying we’ve had a bad year and such a terrible start, and I guess we have, if we want to say we want to win races and so on, but we should have scored points in the first race of the season, we potentially could have scored them in a second. We just got unlucky with the damage and things like that.
“And then we’ve had a good race in Australia and a better race in Baku. So, nothing’s bad. I think we are just in that middle spot at the minute and it’s close between us and Alpine, AlphaTauri, Haas at times, Alfa Romeo.
“Everyone is there or thereabouts so it’s just a close battle. One day we’ll look a bit better and the next day we’ll look a little bit worse but it’s enjoyable.”
Looking ahead to this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, Norris says he expects McLaren to continue being among the series of teams fighting for the lower reaches of the points.
Even with the new parts introduced in Azerbaijan, the British driver contends that the four teams above McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship remain considerably out of reach in race trim.
“Just I guess similar to where we were,” he considered. “I don’t expect too many more things. The car is the same as last weekend, so maybe just trying to understand the new parts that we brought to Baku, which I think we have, so maybe exploit them a little bit more.
“The rest is just trying to get a couple of points. You know, we have four teams that are considerably ahead of where we are. Every now and then we can maybe get close, but it comes to the race and they are another league compared to us.
“So we are kind of fighting for ninth and 10th at the minute, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but the small points will add up.”
Following two nightmare race weekends for Alpine that ended scoreless, McLaren head into the fifth round of the season, and F1’s first of three visits to the United States across the 2023 campaign, leading the midfield pack in the standings by six points.
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