Lando Norris has admitted he is "not really looking forward" to the Las Vegas Grand Prix, given McLaren's poor performance in Sin City the past two years.
The British driver heads to Nevada with a comfortable buffer in the F1 drivers' standings. His closest rival is his team-mate, Oscar Piastri, who is 24 points behind and will obviously also be racing the MCL39 in America's playground.
Max Verstappen, however, remains in distant contention. At 49 points adrift, the Dutchman will be looking to use Red Bull's expected superiority over McLaren in Las Vegas to remain in the hunt until at least the following round, in Qatar.
The four-time F1 drivers' champion clinched his most recent crown under the lights of The Strip 12 months ago, and will be hoping the RB21 can deliver him another solid haul of points whilst Norris and Piastri potentially struggle.
The cool conditions in Las Vegas have proven problematic for McLaren in the first two runnings of the event, due to the Woking-based squad's cars generally being forgiving to its tyres, which means it struggles to get them into the correct temperature window in colder weather.
In 2023, they qualified P16 and P19, respectively. The latter salvaged two points for finishing tenth and securing the fastest lap. Meanwhile, the latter crashed heavily on the second lap.
Although last year was an improvement for McLaren, the pair still endured one of their worst weekends of the campaign and were slower than their closest rivals.
When asked in front of media, including RacingNews365, whether the cooler conditions of the night race will help or hinder McLaren this time around, Norris replied: "Hinder, for sure. I think it was our worst race last year. So I'm not really looking forward to it.
"We've been trying to work quite hard on improving those things. We know Mercedes were incredibly strong there last year, as well as Red Bull and Ferrari.
"I think we were the bottom of those four. So yeah, we'll wait and see. Obviously, we've improved a lot of things this year, so I'm not going to be too negative about it."
Norris zeroed in on the final two rounds, in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, as ones he is feeling more positive about, but was quick to reiterate the jeopardy facing McLaren in Las Vegas, where the temperatures are expected to be below 10 degrees Celsius.
"I think there's plenty to look forward to. We know Abu Dhabi and Qatar are ones we are looking forward to," the 11-time grand prix winner added.
"Las Vegas just a little bit less, because they've been probably some of our weakest races over the last two years. So let's wait and see."
Most read
In this article
Join the conversation!