Lando Norris cautiously optimistic on McLaren chances for Australian GP

Lando Norris labelled McLaren’s Friday running at the Australian Grand Prix as ‘decent’ as they appeared to show small signs of progress with their car.

The MCL36 has been a little bit difficult for Norris and Daniel Ricciardo so far, with the Briton bemoaning a lack of downforce as one of the main reasons behind their struggles at the start of the 2022 season.

However, Saudi Arabia showed a little bit of progress from Bahrain as Norris earned his first points of the season and practice on Friday in Melbourne appeared to go fairly well for them too, with him achieving P5 in FP1.

Of course, you can’t read too much into that and Norris isn’t getting ahead of himself but he admits things felt decent enough and hopefully that will continue into Saturday and qualifying.

Speaking to F1 after the second practice session, Norris said:

“It looked alright, it wasn’t amazing. It was decent and probably our best Friday so far so I’m hoping it can continue into tomorrow because we have a good feeling.

“We made a few changes and we’ve learned a bit already from the last weekends that we’ve implemented is working reasonably well so we’ve taken a small step forwards, it’s a good start and hopefully we can take that into tomorrow.”

Norris’ team-mate Daniel Ricciardo also admitted he was fairly pleased with the pace that the McLaren showed on Friday, but said he had no idea if their competitors were sandbagging and that, therefore, could make today obsolete for the Maccas.

Even so, they appear to be making progress in the right direction and that alone is something to be optimistic about.

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