Lando Norris "still learning" to drive McLaren despite stunning start to season

McLaren

Norris "still learning" to drive McLaren despite stunning start to season

Norris sits fourth in the world championship

Ewan Gale

Wednesday 16 June 2021 10:37

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Lando Norris has revealed he is still learning how to extract the maximum potential from this year's McLaren despite a blistering start to the campaign.

The British driver sits fourth in the F1 drivers' championship after six rounds, only being overtaken by Red Bull's Sergio Perez after the Mexican's victory in Azerbaijan last time out.

At McLaren, Norris has vastly outperformed his more experienced team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and when asked if it was down to him doing a better job at extracting potential or whether the MCL35M simply suited him, he replied: "A little bit of both.

"Over the years I have just been getting used to driving an F1 car altogether.

"It takes longer than some people think and you can start to feel comfortable but it about extracting those last hundredths and so on which is a lot trickier to do. This year, the car is different and there are different things on the car and you have to drive it in a different way.

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"I am still learning a lot now with every race that we do about the car. Monaco was the best qualifying I have done and I made mistakes in previous qualifying and races because I have not known about the car enough.

"I am still learning about a lot of things and especially in Bahrain, for example, and the first couple of races of the season, I was driving it too much like last year's car and I had to adapt a lot to this year's car."

Norris can't drive McLaren to his liking

Norris is in only his third season as an F1 driver, but this season has provided a test with the cuts to downforce at the rear-end of the car changing the driving characteristics of the machinery, despite there being a large carryover from 2020.

"There is definitely a lot of differences and it has not been easy going from the last two years to this year and I can't just drive it the same way," he added.

"Just be a better driver, I have had to adapt to a lot of different things and I still can't necessarily drive it the way I want to as a preference from how I drive it in F3, F4 and things like that.

"I can't drive it the way that I want to so a bit of it is that you just have to adapt, every car in F1 is different and you have to get used to it but even this year, from the last two years, the car is different and I have had to change and it has taken me a good two or three races to adapt from last year to this year."