Lando Norris asserts that McLaren’s early struggles during the 2023 Formula 1 season made the team better prepared to fight at the front of the field later on in the campaign.
McLaren began the past season braced for a challenging start after the revelation that it had missed development targets over the winter with its brand-new MCL60 challenger.
But having initially battled to avoid Q1 exits in the nascent stages, the introduction of an extensive upgrade package from July’s Austrian Grand Prix elevated McLaren into the position as Red Bull’s closest contender.
Norris enjoyed his most productive F1 season as he collected seven podiums en route to scoring a career-best 205 points.
Meanwhile, rookie team-mate Oscar Piastri accompanied Norris on the rostrum in Japan and Qatar and obtained his maiden F1 victory in the Sprint race at the Losail circuit.
Despite the promise of improvements, Norris admits that he was sceptical of the step McLaren would be able to make following the torrid opening to the year it endured.
“The beginning was tough because I thought it was going to be for a whole year in a way,” Norris conceded. “You didn’t know how much we were going to improve. Especially the very beginning.
“Of course we said we’ll be a bit patient and we know we’ve got some decent things coming. But in the past few years when we’ve had decent things come in there’s not always stood out to be that much of an improvement.
“This year was quite the opposite, it turned out to be almost a bigger improvement than we were expecting.
“But it was tough because you never want to start the season thinking, ‘Wow, 24 races to go or 23 races and I can’t even get out of Q1’. It’s tough knowing that and thinking that so early on in the season it just makes you think, ‘Damn, this is going to be a hell of a long year’.”
From the moment McLaren launched its revised MCL60 in Austria, only Red Bull, who won all but one race to secure both titles, managed to outscore the Woking squad.
Norris believes that McLaren’s ability to maximise situations with an enhanced car derived from the attention to detail it needed when combating an uncompetitive package.
“But I think what set us up very well is that it made everyone work very hard to achieve everything you could with a bad car which set us up very nicely for when we eventually had a good car,” the Briton continued.
“I think we’ve been one of the best teams, maybe not so much after Vegas [McLaren suffered a double Q1 elimination], but apart from that, we’ve maximized the points every weekend and reliability and everything else on top of just having a quick car, I think we’ve been very good at it.
“I think being in a bad position at the start of the season almost helps a little bit because you realize sometimes when you’re quick a lot of things are easy and they come easily and you kind of forget sometimes the smaller things. When you’re struggling every little, tiny, small thing is almost more important and therefore you utilize them more.
“So when you have a quick car you kind of have a quick car and you’re utilizing a lot of stuff so I think you can set us up nicely.
“But then there’s other things you’ve got to prepare for when you’re fighting at the top. It’s still a different race when you’re fighting their compared to at the back.”
With McLaren overhauling Aston Martin to claim fourth in the Constructors’ standings, Norris addressed how “proud” he was of the entire team for its remarkable resurgence.
“So emotionally proud of the whole team that they did such a big turnaround, one of the biggest turnarounds probably in the last 10 years or something in a period of time when it’s more difficult than ever to turn the car around because of wind tunnel time and costs and all of these things,” he added.
“So for us to do that against Mercedes who dominated Formula 1 a few years ago for what, five or six years, and against Ferrari who have always been one of the best teams.
“To catch up with Red Bull, who have had the most dominant car-team combo ever in Formula 1. For us to be close [to beating them] at some races is quite impressive and a great achievement for everybody in the team.
“So proud and very happy because I think we didn’t expect it to be so good and we know we can definitely get more out of it once we have a bit of a winter to go over everything. So I’m very, very happy with everyone.”
