Lando Norris has said that McLaren's fluctuating recent performances are a by-product of the team having essentially built a "whole new car" for the second half of the season. After a dismal start to the season in which McLaren were struggling even to score points, a raft of mid-season upgrades transformed the performance of the MCL60, allowing Norris to take back-to-back second-place finishes in Britain and Hungary. However, the team fell backwards somewhat at last weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, with Norris salvaging seventh after initially appearing to struggle with top-end pace relative to other cars. "I don't think we had optimal wing settings," Norris told media, including RacingNews365.com , when asked to explain his slow pace at Spa-Francorchamps. "We just haven't been able to focus on what we wanted to because we brought a whole new car, and all of the focus was on doing that, which is the correct thing to do, because there's only three or four races which are probably as low downforce as this."
Norris accepting McLaren's fluctuating performance
The Briton added that he was sanguine about McLaren's relative underperformance at Spa, noting that it was better to be competitive at some circuits than at none, as had been the case earlier in the season. "All of our focus was on just trying to deliver the new car that we've had a few weeks ago, and that's clearly delivered us two podiums," said Norris. "I'd much rather take that and have a couple of bad weekends than just be below par the whole time." Norris added that despite finishing ahead of Mercedes on merit at the preceding two races, the Silver Arrows were still ahead of McLaren on overall performance. "I'm happy that we've had some good weekends, but we're not where we need to be. We're not racing with Mercedes – they’re clearly another step ahead of us still," said Norris.
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