The Chinese Grand Prix sprint has confirmed McLaren’s difficulties against Ferrari and Mercedes. Lando Norris admits that the team still lacks performance to compete with the leaders.
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The sprint held at the Shanghai circuit allowed Lando Norris to secure a solid fourth place, but the McLaren driver is under no illusions about his team’s current level. Despite an honorable result, the Briton believes that the gap to the leading teams remains very real.
During this short race, McLaren once again showed it could fight in the chasing pack, without however being able to compete directly with Ferrari and Mercedes.
Norris was realistic after the finish, highlighting that the team had simply maximized what it could achieve in these conditions.
“It’s a shame not to be faster than them, but we did our best, we tried,” he admitted.
Tire management, a weak point
Beyond pure performance, Norris believes that McLaren suffers particularly in certain specific areas, notably tire warm-up and management.
The cool conditions observed during the Shanghai sprint made this weakness even more visible. According to the Briton, Ferrari is currently managing to exploit its tires much more effectively.
“It’s difficult to get the tires working quickly when it’s this cold. Ferrari does it better than us because they have more grip.”
In a sprint where every lap counts, this difference in performance weighed heavily. McLaren found itself unable to keep up with the leaders’ pace over the duration of the race.
Progress, but still work to do
Despite these difficulties, Norris believes his team is progressing in the right direction. Engineers have identified several areas for improvement, even if solutions cannot be implemented overnight.
“We know where we are performing well and we also know where we still lack speed.”
The McLaren driver insists, however, that improvements take time. “It’s difficult to progress as quickly as we’d like in our weak points at the moment, but we’ve already made progress and we must continue.”
Read more Kimi Antonelli reveals the secret of his historic pole in Shanghai
In this context, Norris prefers to focus on the positive aspect of this sprint: the team was able to get the best possible result despite a performance deficit.
“Today, we did the best with what we had, so I’m satisfied.”
Piastri scores his first points
For his part, Oscar Piastri provided some additional points for McLaren by finishing sixth. However, the Australian experienced a frustrating end to the race after the restart following the safety car.
At that moment, he had managed to overtake Kimi Antonelli, taking advantage of a small mistake by the Mercedes driver in the final corner. But this maneuver could not ultimately be validated, as it had been carried out before the line allowing overtaking.
“He made a mistake in the last corner and he did well to stay on track. I tried to be optimistic, but we couldn’t get anything out of it.”
Piastri also believes that McLaren simply lacked the pace to fight higher up the standings.
“We don’t have the pace of Mercedes or Ferrari and he would have overtaken me again anyway.”
The goal: make the MCL faster
For McLaren, the conclusion of this sprint is therefore quite clear: the car still needs to progress to hope to fight regularly with the best teams.
Piastri perfectly summarizes the British team’s current situation: “We still have work to do to make the car faster.”
An important task therefore awaits McLaren if the team wants to close the gap with Ferrari and Mercedes over the course of the season.
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