Lando Norris contends that he is not surprised with McLaren’s gap to Red Bull, citing that Ferrari’s step in 2024 has been the “most impressive” among Formula 1 teams.
McLaren completed one of the most remarkable turnarounds ever seen in F1 last season as it went from struggling to amass points to being a consistent podium scorer.
The Woking-based squad capitalised on both Ferrari and Mercedes beginning the season with wrong car concepts and being restricted with changes under the cost cap.
However, Ferrari’s revamped SF-24 car for 2024 has proven to be the closest contender to Red Bull, landing podium finishes in all three rounds and a 1-2 finish in Australia.
Norris has praised the Maranello-based squad’s improvement, but he believes that McLaren’s closeness to the top two teams in the championship is an encouraging sign.
Asked whether he anticipated the margin to Red Bull to be what it is at this nascent stage, Norris answered: “The gap to Red Bull I think is completely expected.
“When they stopped developing last year, they put a lot of time and effort into trying to develop a good car for this year so for us to be still as close as we are to them I think is a good sign.
“You’ll probably see the most impressive has been Ferrari in how they’ve been able to take a very big step I would say. Probably one of the biggest steps from last year to this year.
“But for us to still be not far behind I think is still a completely good sign for us.
“Of course we always hope for that a little bit more and we hope to just come out and be able to fight straight away at the front.
“But we took a step and we weren’t able to maybe tackle a few of those things that we struggled to tackle over the last few years. But now more than ever we’re trying to tackle those areas.”
Norris has denied that Ferrari has leapt McLaren in the pecking order, citing that the Italian marque was quicker than the team at several rounds at the end of last term.
“There were still plenty of races at the end of last year that we were not even close to second fastest team,” he continued.
“There was still Abu Dhabi, we were not even close to being second fastest team or third fastest team or even fourth.
“So I would never say we were second fastest and now Ferrari have jumped us or anything like this.
“I want to believe that we maybe have a slightly better all round package but I don’t think we’ve visited some tracks yet where we’ve seen as many weaknesses as example for instance, not looking forward to it. At a couple of tracks I think that really show where the cars weak at it really enough. So I think on the whole I’m very happy.”
The Briton, who classified third in Melbourne last weekend, is enthused with McLaren’s rate of progress over the interim period between visits to the Albert Park Circuit.
“Could I be happier? Yes. Could we all? Yes, because we always want more and you always want to be able to compete a bit higher,” he assessed.
“But I think for us to start the season in such a solid position, knowing that we can still improve on so many areas, it’s a smile on my face because we’re in a good position and we know we can get a lot better still.
“So if you think back to 12 months ago, it was still a very, very different situation to be in. So we’ve outdeveloped our competitors since last year by a huge step.
“It gets harder and harder to do that the closer you get to the top but still plenty of things for us to do.
“So I’m happy with the step we’ve made as a team and I’m very happy at the work ethic and the effort everyone’s putting in to trying to continue that.”
