Lando Norris explains source of frustration for McLaren's first day of Bahrain testing

Lando Norris has explained that brake issues on the McLaren were the reason behind him being unable to clock up the laps and mileage he would have hoped for at Bahrain testing on Thursday.

The second week of Formula 1 testing is well underway in Sakhir with the teams descending on the Middle Eastern nation ahead of the first Grand Prix of the year at the same venue next weekend.

Indeed, it’s a crucial time in the campaign as the teams and drivers get to grips with their all-new cars following the introduction of brand new regulations for 2022, and every mile and lap at this stage really does count towards data gathering.

McLaren had a good test in Barcelona back in February, of course, so that may soften the blow a little when it comes to their frustrating first day in Bahrain, which saw Daniel Ricciardo hit by illness and the MCL36 struck with brake problems.

Post-day one, Norris explained it all with him only able to get in 50 laps over the whole session:

“I think on the whole, not the day we really wanted,” said Norris during an interview with Formula 1.

“Daniel’s not feeling so well, so I decided to jump in – it was much easier to do it that way. But we had quite a few issues today with the car, so it took quite a long time to figure it out and limited us quite a bit to do the amount of laps we wanted to do.

“A bit frustrating because especially here, being so different to Barcelona, we wanted to try and understand as much as we could with how the car is working here on a much bumpier track, a more difficult track – which I think we still did to a certain extent, we just couldn’t do any of the longer running.

“[We] made the most of it, but definitely some issues which held us back and things we have to fix.

“We had