McLaren now “comfortably third” best team - Norris

Lando Norris believes McLaren has “comfortably” positioned itself as the ‘best of the rest’ behind F1’s title challengers Ferrari and Red Bull after a dramatic turn-around in the opening races of the season.

Norris will line up fifth for Sunday’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix ahead of team-mate Daniel Ricciardo in sixth, lofty positions for the fourth race of the year considering the team's performance at the opening race in Bahrain.

Just a month ago at that race, Ricciardo and Norris finished 14th and 15th but given the about-turn in form, the Briton said: “Now we are seeing more that Bahrain was a little bit more of an outlier.

“It was still a reality at the time. A lot of what we saw is still on the car, but we’ve just kind of understood it a bit more.

"We’ve worked on the weaknesses and we’ve made some improvements. There are a lot of positives from it but I think we are comfortably third, I would say."

Norris was the third fastest driver in Friday qualifying at Imola but could do nothing about the faster Red Bull and Ferrari cars behind him in sprint qualifying and admitted it was difficult to know what pace to drive.

“It was just because of the guys I was next to at the start, it’s hard to judge your own pace compared to guys who are one and a half seconds quicker a lap.

“Especially knowing where Carlos [Sainz] was, and then Sergio [Perez], I just tried to make the gap as big as possible but no matter what I did they still would have passed me.”

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