30/03/2022
NEWS STORY
McLaren's inauspicious start to the season has had a detrimental effect on team morale admits Lando Norris, while insisting that the Woking outfit remains fully motivated.
Determined to reclaim third spot from Ferrari and close the gap to Mercedes and Red Bull, McLaren's pre-season hopes appear to have been cruelly dashed as the Woking outfit lies eighth in the team standings.
Finishing 14th and 15th in the season opener, after neither driver made it into Q1, things improved just a little at Jeddah where Lando Norris opened the team's points account with a 7th.
However, after failing yet again to make it into Q1, along with the well-documented brake cooling issues the team has struggled with low-speed grip and the Mercedes lack of grunt, certainly compared to the Ferrari and Red Bull power units.
While Norris was happy to open his points account in the new era, the team is aware that but for the retirements of the likes of Valtteri Bottas and Fernando Alonso, it could have been worse.
"When you have points and you have success and you have podiums, then there's always a rise in morale," says Norris, who heads to Australia tenth in the driver standings.
"I don't think it's got worse," he insists. "I think there's expectations, of course, that's racing, we want to have success and do well.
"So we're never going to be as happy in P16 compared to if we were P8 or P7 or whatever, so there's always just a little bit of happiness gone.
"The key thing is everyone's so very motivated," he adds. "It's such a long season to go, and even if it's two months of struggling, and six, seven, eight races of struggling, I think everyone's quite confident and motivated within themselves and with other people that we can make good progress together, and be back where we should be.
"I don't think we can be happy with where we are," he admits. "I think that's the point of what I'm trying to say, to say we can't be happy and therefore we're not. But the important thing is we're motivated still to get back to where we know we should be."