Norris did not expect McLaren update performance gain

Lando Norris did not expect McLaren's car updates to bring such a leap in performance for the team midway through the season.

The start of the season was tough for McLaren after the team admitted they were behind on the development of the MCL60, with the first significant update hitting the track at Austria.

Since then the team has been comfortably challenging for positions behind Red Bull, with Norris and Oscar Piastri gaining podiums in the last three races.

When asked if the performance gain is over a second, Norris told media, including RacingNews365: "No. It's a no. I don't think it is. It's a fact, it's not a second.

"I think that the biggest thing is a lot of other teams that were competitive and start aren't as competitive now. If you look at Aston Martin, if you look at Ferrari, they were a lot closer to the front than they are now and we just seem to have swapped positions for some reason.

"I don’t know if they've taken a step back or Red Bull have taken a step forward or what, but we were expecting the upgrade to help us race against them and so far, at a lot of these races, we've been ahead of them."

Norris: McLaren taken another step forward

Norris highlights that the last few circuits have been historically good for McLaren, with Austria notably being a circuit he likes having achieved his first F1 podium there in 2020.

"I think some of these tracks that we've been to, we've performed well at in the past, you know. Silverstone I was already P4 last year. Budapest already last year, we were P5 or P6 or something," said Norris.

"They’re tracks we have performed well at in the past and now we've just taken another step forward."