The traditional British team is gradually making its way through the starting field. McLaren is looking to take the next step at its home race at Silverstone by introducing its second successive upgrade package. However, the team is still restrained and warns that they still have a lot of work ahead of them.
A week ago, Lando Norris managed to make perfect use of the first package of upgrades of the upcoming three. Before the last stage, which the papayas will see in Hungary, the British team brought news from the middle package. In it we find a new front wing, nose, slightly modified rear suspensions and also wings in the area of the rear brakes.
However, on Friday after training Lando Norris delayed the big celebrations. Instead, you have to sit down at the same table with the engineers and start digging into the collected data. “It was a difficult day. You never have an easy day here, it’s complicated by the wind, bumpy circuit while trying to get the downforce level right and stuff like that. It didn’t go very smoothly. We moved forward but I didn’t feel very confident in the car. We have work to do.”
The McLaren pilot did not do as well as his teammate in the second practice session. He finished fourteenth, 1.182 seconds behind Max Verstappen, with Oscar Piastri less than nine tenths behind.
Norris revealed that he had trouble going to the edge on the soft compound. “I felt more confident on the hard compound at the beginning of training than on the soft ones. Of course, I wasn’t faster then.”
“But when we put on soft tires, we didn’t have that much better pace. It’s a bit confusing, we couldn’t transfer our speed on the soft compound to the track. We will try to understand it. We performed better in the first training than in the second. It was windier, so maybe that played a part,” thinks the darling of the home audience.
The weather could change on Saturday, which it can Norris help. Given Friday’s speed, even he won’t protest if the heavens shuffle our order. Would it help McLaren? “Maybe, you never know. I would say yes. I enjoy riding in the rain. If it rains and for this reason it will be more difficult, I am looking forward to it. Maybe it will help us in terms of performance, because today we lost a bit.”
Oscar Piastri tested the improved single-seater for the first time at Silverstone, with which Lando Norris began to familiarize himself a week ago. The young Australian praised him. “It was nice. The new package basically fulfilled the expectations I had after driving the simulator. It’s encouraging. However, we are still looking for that golden middle of the settings to find the speed. It’s decent, but we still need to fine-tune a few things. Overall it was a productive day, we tried a lot.”
McLaren has yet to hit the ideal settings. That will be the task for Friday night and Saturday’s third practice. “This circuit is quite different from Austria. There are a lot of fast turns. At the moment we have a bit of a problem with the balance of the car in fast and slow corners. We tried a few things today. Some worked, some didn’t, so we’ll see. However, we have decent speed, in the second practice neither of us had an ideal qualifying lap. The first attempt looked better. We will try to find more.”
Will be Plates in the qualification to think about the third part? In his own words, “definitely”. “Williams seemed very fast today. Maybe it was such pompous stints on their part,” he smiled at the idea of the home team trying to flatter the crowd with an artificial Friday result.
“But it was decent, I finished in the TOP10 in both training sessions. We will see. A week ago we easily got into Q3 and even with the old car I could get into it if I stayed on the track. Q3 is our goal and we will have to change that on Sunday,” he added.
2023-07-07 18:57:58
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