Lando Norris hopes for "groovy" MCL36 adaptation

McLaren

Norris hopes for "groovy" MCL36 adaptation

Norris recently signed a new deal to remain with McLaren until 2025

Sam Hall

Friday 11 February 2022 21:30

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Lando Norris is hoping everything will be "groovy" and the all-new McLaren MCL36 will suit his driving style.

F1 will race to radically new technical regulations this year with a large focus placed on generating downforce through ground effect technology to improve racing.

Making the most of this requires a different driving style to that needed in the previous generation of cars and Norris is hoping he will quickly get up to speed.

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Asked if there was a risk it could take time for him to adapt to the change, Norris said: “Potentially yeah. But there is that for everyone. It might suit peoples driving styles more than others and it could potentially be a bad one for me but that’s life right?

“You’ve got to deal with it. It’s something that you deal with. Before F1 I would have to deal with it in every category that I did. I only spent one year in any series so every year I had to adapt to something new and try to make the most of that.

"I hope it just suits my driving style and everything’s groovy but there’s definitely going to be things no matter what that I’m going to have to adapt to and change to but I think that’s going to be the case with everyone.”

Comparing the task of adapting to the new regulations further to his junior career, Norris reflected: "In other series, get the excuse of ‘It’s my first year’. In other series, your first series is the year that you’ve already got to perform and I think it’s a similar thing for me.

“I wouldn’t want to use that as an excuse to come in and go ‘I just feel like I have to adapt to the car’ but it’s the case and I think it has been proven by champions and race winners and so on that a Formula 1 car, in particular, is not an easy thing to get your head around and to really get in that zone of when you are really extracting every bit of performance out of the car, which I felt I did more of last year, that’s what Daniel struggled to do.

“I’m sure he felt like at times he was doing but it’s the next little step that is very difficult to do."