Lando Norris reveals inside McLaren struggle: 'It's tough for us to realise'

Lando Norris has revealed that McLaren is finding it "tough" to accept that it no longer has a car that is strong everywhere, as it had in the last couple of seasons.

The new power unit regulations have seen the Woking-based team's period of dominance come to an end, with it currently sitting a distant third in the constructors' standings.

Norris is yet to secure a victory in his title defence and is coming off two consecutive retirements as a result of power unit-related problems.

His pace across the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix weekend is the strongest he has shown since securing a podium in Miami, having qualified fourth on the grid.

Pole position was too big an ask for the McLaren driver, although he did fall just 0.003s short of qualifying ahead of championship leader Kimi Antonelli.

Norris had looked like a pole contender heading into qualifying after an impressive showing in practice, although he insisted that a step forward has definitely been made by the papaya outfit.

Asked if McLaren's rivals made a greater step, Norris told select media, including RacingNews365: "No, no, I think we took a good step forward. Nothing slipped away; it came towards us. We got better.

"It's just that the others pushed a bit more. If you look at their onboard footage and then look at our onboard, I think it's quite easy to see the difference in balance and ease of producing lap time.

"So I'm very happy. I know the gap to P3 was small, but he's [Antonelli] in a car that can go three tenths quicker, and I'm in a car that can maybe go half a tenth quicker, maybe one. So, no, I'm satisfied, and we should be happy as a team."

Reality hits McLaren

For McLaren, reality has suddenly struck that it no longer has a car that can fight for regular victories, at least not until significant improvements are made.

Mercedes are very much the team to beat, with Norris believing it has been a challenge for McLaren to come to terms with not having the performance levels it has had in recent seasons.

"Yeah, I think it's just that, for a few years now, we've not had any real outliers," added Norris. "We won in Monaco last year, so I think it's tough for us to realise we're not at the same level we were.

"We don't have a car that is just good everywhere. We have a car that is pretty good in Miami, pretty reasonable in Canada, not bad here, but shocking in Monaco.

"For us to be three tenths off here, I think it's a good effort, considering we were six or seven tenths off last weekend, and that's not ideal. So, no, we're happy. It's P4, the other guys did good laps, but we were definitely unable to achieve that."