Yesterday at Silverstone it was a great podium, but keep your feet on the ground, because there is still a lot to improve. This sentence would be enough to sum up Lando Norris’ thoughts after raising the second cup on the podium at Silverstone, home of his home grand prix and that of McLaren.
The Woking team has introduced a very important package of aerodynamic innovations during the last 2 races – Austria and Great Britain – and this has helped Norris bring home a podium that is sensational if you think of all the difficulties in terms of performance shown by the MCL60s.
The great performance of the McLaren drivers in qualifying, then repeated in the race, would leave room for a rosy vision for the rest of the season. But Lando Norris preaches calm. The MCL60 still lags behind in several critical areas compared to its direct competition.
“We never had tire management like this until Silverstone. Even in Bahrain it was diametrically opposed,” Norris told Motorsport.com.
“Tracks like Silverstone allow us to take good care of the tires. We are very competitive at high speeds and we are almost on par with the results obtained by Red Bull. In fact, I would say that towards medium speeds, such as Turn 15 at Silverstone, we are close to being the best car on the grid. At super high speeds like Copse, maybe we’re not at that point, but then in the race we’re consistent, while others lose speed.”
Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing, Lando Norris
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
“In this way we are able to take care of the tires very well, especially when there is no thermal limitation inside the tyre, as happened at Silverstone”.
If the strengths of the MCL60 are clear, so are the weaknesses. The main one seems to be the competitiveness of the British car in the slow corners, where Hamilton managed to put it under pressure during yesterday’s race.
“We have a mediocre car, and when I say mediocre I should mean pretty terrible, in the slow speed corners,” explained Norris. “Our car is extremely difficult to drive in those conditions. I feel like there are people getting excited about our result, and I accept that, but we’ll be going to a couple of tracks shortly where I’m sure people will be saying: ‘ But what happened to you? How is it possible that you suddenly went so badly?'”.
“We’ve improved a lot of things, like tire degradation, and there’s always little things you try to do with tire cooling and so on, but nothing major from that point of view. It’s just that this track has us allowed to take good care of the tires and keep them in good condition. It’s very simple.”
“A lot depends on the track. I don’t want to get too excited. The updates have given good results, but there are still many aspects that are far from being able to compete in certain points with a Mercedes and, overall, also with Red Bull. So there is there’s still a lot of work to do in both areas,” concluded the English rider.
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