Lando Norris believes McLaren is "struggling at the minute" going into qualifying for the Mexico City Grand Prix.
Due to local hero Pato O'Ward taking over his MCL39 for the first practice session at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Norris faced only an hour to acclimatise his car to the dusty, high-altitude conditions.
The British driver, who goes into the race 14 points adrift of McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri in the fight for this season's drivers' title, finished fourth quickest, a quarter of a second behind Red Bull's Max Verstappen, with Charles Leclerc in his Ferrari and Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli sandwiched in between.
Although initially suggesting himself to be "in a reasonable place", in continuing to assess his day, Norris then revealed issues.
"I feel like I got up to speed very quickly," said Norris. "I was quite surprised. My first lap was pretty good, and the second was a good step.
"I feel like I found the limit quickly," before suggesting that the limit was a low bar. "But there was a limit, which is just holding us back a bit.
"Not that it was a bad day, but normally we're very good on Friday, and then everyone catches up on Saturday. We're already a little bit behind. We definitely have some work to do.
"It's just the balance of the car is a bit all over the place, same as the last few weeks, just single lap stuff. We're struggling at the minute. We're working hard. We're trying everything we can, so we'll see what we can do and see what we can find."
As for giving up his car for O'Ward, FP1 was compromised due to technical issues, which, in particular, meant there was a lack of GPS data for the teams to manage their drivers, but also no onboards to help gain information.
"There wasn't a lot to look at," assessed Norris. "Of course, you look at the data and things, but you just try and get the general understanding of the grip, the feeling of the car and things like that.
"There's only so much you can really take from staring at a screen."
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