Lando Norris has called for McLaren to focus on making the car “easier to drive” in varied conditions, something the Briton admits himself and Oscar Piastri have asked for.
Since McLaren introduced a huge upgrade back at the Austrian Grand Prix, their season has turned around dramatically.
They’ve gone from being one of the slowest to one of the quickest, to the extent where they’re arguably second in the pecking order.
Norris and Piastri have secured back-to-back 2-3 finishes, with Norris having finished second at the Japanese Grand Prix, before the young Australian finished second at the Qatar Grand Prix.
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Monumental strides in the right direction are certainly being made by the Woking-based team, who are close to overtaking Aston Martin for fourth in the Constructors’ Championship.
More progress can be made though, with Norris not being a fan of how the MCL60 is “on a knife edge” when conditions change, with him calling for a car which performs more consistently.
“I think at the minute, that’s our next target with our development is still to make it a bit quicker, but also just to make the car a bit easier to drive in different conditions because both Oscar and my comments are still, like, you have to drive a car like this, it’s on a knife edge; if you’re not pushing to 100% you’re just slow,” Norris said ahead of the Qatar GP, as reported by Motorsport Week.
“So I feel like we’re doing a good job finding that level, but it’s just very difficult as soon as conditions change to this, we either go one way off this knife and they were just struggling a bit more. Finding that consistency is our next target and I think that all kind of ties together.”
To make the car easier to drive, the 23-year-old recognises that this could cause the overall speed of the car decrease.
He stresses, though, that he’d rather have a “quick car” which is tough to control, rather than a “slow car” which is a joy to drive.
It’s a difficult dilemma for McLaren, with Norris admitting himself that it’s “very difficult” to design a fast car which is also easy to drive.
“For where we are, for what I feel like we still want to achieve, for what we have done in the season, before we really focus on the smaller details, even for what we have a lot of it is small details that make this big difference,” he addressed.
“But the smaller details in terms of making the driver a bit happier rather than just making the car quick. But like I said the other day, I’d rather have a quick car and a tricky one to drive than vice versa: a slow car to drive and a nice car to drive.
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“But I think this want of making the car a bit more drivable, a bit more rounded, I think that’s almost the hardest task to achieve because it is so difficult to do this without compromise.
“It’s such a difficult thing to have the front end strong here, but then not to be too strong that you struggle on the exit because then the rear needs to be better.
“And, you know, it’s more like a juggling act rather than just adding things everywhere. And the juggling act is the one that’s very difficult to achieve but, it’s tough.”