Small signs of progress for McLaren in Australia

Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo believe McLaren have taken a reasonable step forward at the Australian Grand Prix.

The opening race of the 2022 season in Bahrain was disastrous for McLaren, the team having failed to score points, and while Norris got himself and the team off the mark with a P7 in Saudi Arabia, it was not a positive start to this new era with McLaren finding themselves comfortably adrift of the leading pace.

But while the gap is still over a second, McLaren at least were able to get both of their cars into the top 10 during Friday practice in Melbourne.

Having seen signs of progress, Norris now is pushing to find even more heading into qualifying.

Put to him by reporters that the MCL36 looked to be going all right out there on the track, Norris responded: “Looked all right, wasn’t amazing.

“It was decent, 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 this weekend already, or from the previous few weekends that we’ve implemented and I think it’s working reasonably well.

“We’ve taken a small step forward so it’s a good start, and hopefully we can continue that into tomorrow and make a couple of further improvements.”

Norris explained he felt more confident on his ‘push’ laps, although he thinks more work is needed on the long runs.

“I think we have a bit more work to do on the long run, I’m a bit more confident in the short run,” he said.

“I think a bit of it is our car limitation and a bit of that exposing a bit more in the high-fuel pace, so I think we have a bit to understand there and maybe some improvements to make for tomorrow, but I think stuff we can definitely try and change.”

Record.