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Lando Norris declared Ferrari to be “a long way ahead” after the opening day of practice for Formula 1’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, and said McLaren is in a close fight with AlphaTauri and Alpine.
McLaren had been expected to perform strongly at Baku thanks to the car’s strengths being well-suited to the demands of the track, but Norris was only eighth-fastest in the second free practice session, with team-mate Daniel Ricciardo 13th.
While it’s not unusual for McLaren to have modest overall positions on a Friday, having never been higher than sixth in FP2 in the previous five events, the 0.582s gap between the lead Ferrari of Carlos Sainz in third and Norris was unusually large – even factoring in the Baku track’s long laptime.
“It looks very close between us, AlphaTauri, Renault and so on,” said Norris after practice.
“Ferrari and Red Bull look quite a long way ahead of us. It’s going to be tough [in qualifying], getting to Q3 is the main target.”
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, however, said he expected to see McLaren reverse the trend versus the Scuderia for the rest of the weekend.
“I think McLaren are very very quick but they haven’t showed it for some reason today,” Leclerc said. “Maybe it was less of clean day compared to us but I feel like they are still a bit ahead of us here, so we’ll have to wait and see tomorrow.
“It will basically be a fight with McLaren, that are our main competitors.”
Norris felt that the track conditions swung against McLaren between FP1 and FP2. Although the ambient conditions and the peak track temperature were similar, with the sun lower in the sky for the afternoon session more of the track was in shadow and therefore cooler. This could have contributed to Norris’s struggles.
While he believes there should be more to come tomorrow given the car was only what he described as “alright”, Norris said that high expectations for McLaren at Baku were misplaced.
Norris also mentioned Sainz’s suggestion in the podium finishers’ press conference after the Monaco Grand Prix two weeks ago that Norris “should be excited about Baku”, but stressed he didn’t have such high expectations.
“FP1 we were quite good, FP2 not so good – I don’t know if it’s because of the temperatures or something,” said Norris.
“We were obviously expecting to be OK, it was only Carlos who said we were going to be amazing so I didn’t have too high expectations.
“We look decent, we’re where we expected to be but just quite a long way off Ferrari and Red Bull so hopefully overnight we can make improvements.”
Given the relatively small gaps in pace, with the top 13 covered by just 1.2s, there is scope for the competitive picture to change tomorrow – especially with how power sensitive the Baku street circuit is.
Norris declared himself “confident in the car”, and given he gave away a disproportionate amount of time in the final sector on his fastest lap there is scope for the gap to Ferrari to close tomorrow.
The picture painted by the race pace comparison also appears to favour McLaren, another factor that means things could be a little different come qualifying tomorrow once every team is at its maximum pace.
Team-mate Daniel Ricciardo said he was actually happier with his car in FP2 than in FP1 after making what he called “more steps”, although this is more related to his ongoing work to adapt his driving style to better suit it.
Ricciardo spoke yesterday about spending time in the driver-in-loop simulator between the Monaco and Azerbaijan GP weekends and reported positive progress.
“I did quite a bit of work from Monaco into this race and spent a few days on the sim,” said Ricciardo.
“I think the work has paid off. Everything feels as expected, I’ve just got to execute what I know I can do and put it all together.”
