Lando Norris has identified a weakness with the McLaren Formula 1 car that has yet to be rectified in nearly five years. The Woking squad's fortunes were turned around at the Austrian Grand Prix with the first batch of a huge set of upgrades transforming the MCL60 after a slow start to the season. Since the upgrades, McLaren has scored 86 points in four Grand Prix weekends, including back-to-back podiums in Britain and Hungary. Despite the improvement in the package, Norris still feels McLaren must work at eradicating the long-standing weakness in its machinery.
Norris wants improvements
"Even with this upgrade, the performance of driving the car, the handling is not getting any better," Norris told media including RacingNews365 before his run to second in Hungary. "It is still just as difficult to drive, difficult to execute Qualifying laps. "In essence, it is slightly easier because [if you make a] mistake, we are higher up [in the order], especially over the last few weekends. "In the higher-speed corners, it is harder to make a mistake because the car is performing better - and we have made the car quicker although I don't want to get ahead of ourselves as we've only had two weekends where we've been quick - but over the last five years, we have yet to make that step or improvement in slow speed handling and driveability. "For me, a bigger step would be improving how we drive the car, how easy it is to drive the car, rather than just adding 10 more points of load in the slow-speed corners. "That is only going to get us so far up the order." "I know comments from other people are the same in a way, but we are one of the slowest cars in slow-speed corners. "It is just an area that has been bad for us for the last five years that we've not really tackled that well. "At no point have we gone: 'Wow, the slow speed [performance] is strong, now let's work on the high speed.' "It has always been good in the high-speed and poor in the slow-speed."
Tyre factor
Norris also touched on how the Pirelli tyres impact how the car is designed but feels a virtuous circle is possible if the overall car package is improved. "Also a general point with the tyres is how you have to drive the," he said. "It is very difficult to combine as they almost only like to go in a straight line and they don't like to corner. "You have to make the car around this a little bit, but the better you can make the car, the less stress you can put on the tyres and things like that."
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