Lando Norris says McLaren is struggling more with the rear of its new MCL39 Formula 1 car than it would like, as it begins to explore the limits in pre-season testing.
After McLaren clinched the constructors’ championship last year, the squad still elected for a hefty revamp of its F1 car over the winter in a bid to give itself more development opportunities.
The team has openly talked of the car being innovative, with it having worked on improving almost every component.
While early running by both Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri has shown some promising potential in the car, as it topped times on the opening day, the initial experiences have also exposed some early headaches.
Speaking on the second day of Bahrain’s pre-season test, Norris suggested that while there were no alarm bells ringing about his new car, there were some elements that were not as strong as McLaren wanted.
“It feels similar [to last year’s car], which is a good start, and that’s where we wanted to start at least,” he explained.
“Nothing’s been majorly addressed. It’s not like that much has changed - we’ve just tried to make the car quicker all round and add more load.
“But the most simple way of looking at it, honestly, is we still want to try and focus on some areas… more than others. We’ve struggled a bit more with the rear than we would have liked over yesterday and today. But it’s still early days.”
Norris has faith that McLaren would quickly be able to address the rear weakness with set-up tools if it had to prioritise that - so there was nothing to feel unduly concerned about things right now.
“We’re not looking at absolute outright performance,” he said. “If we went into qualifying now I’m sure we would change some things. But a lot of yesterday and today has been ticking the boxes.
“It’s not the fun bit. The fun bit will come this afternoon and tomorrow morning. But along those lines - if we want to improve anything at the minute it’s the rear of the car, and the more you can improve the rear everything just gets better.
“The rest of it feels correct, and it feels in the same ballpark - and that’s what we want.
"I don’t think we’re expecting to be a big step ahead of anyone but, if we’re just there fighting from the beginning- that’s our target, considering how the last few years have been. If we can just be there fighting from the off, then we’ll be happy.”
Trackside impressions
Edd Straw
The McLaren has looked good on track - but the trouble with trying to identify rear instability from trackside is that the driver will often try and sit just within it (a good one will do so very effectively).
However, there were hints of this instability in the high-speed esses yesterday, although that wasn't unusual given the breeze, while the positive rotation that Norris was generating in the afternoon was clearly a little more than he was happy with.
Fundamentally, the McLaren still looks like a good car and the team is working on the set-up to dial the instability out.
Every car will hit some limitations, it's just a question of where they kick in and how controllable the car is. But tracking McLaren's progress this afternoon and tomorrow will be revealing.
It's not impossible that this proves a stubborn and troubling limitation - certainly not impossible given the challenge of achieving a good balance in the car. A little rear instability can be very useful, allowing a driver to rotate the car, but more than that is a problem, so let's see where McLaren gets to by the end of tomorrow.
Right now, if I had to put money on it, I'd guess this is just a relatively normal balance limitation that will be improved with set-up evolution and just part of the usual process of testing. But that's not set in stone and makes for an interesting storyline to follow.
