Lando Norris admits that McLaren struggled with "many things" during pre-season testing in Bahrain. The Woking-based outfit recorded the lowest lap count of any team over the course of three days at the Bahrain International Circuit, while new team boss Andrea Stella stated that the car is not yet able to compete in the top four . Norris acknowledges that the team still have work to do in order to address the issues that arose. "There's still many things, to be honest with you, which we've been struggling with over the last few days," Norris told media, including RacingNews365.com . "I guess we've been exploring, we've been trying a lot of different things with set-ups. The car looks fairly similar but, still, there's quite a few different things on the car. "So [we've] just [been] exploring this, doing all the standard tests that everyone has been doing, seeing the different options that we can go ahead for, so [there has been] a lot of testing, a lot of aero tests at the same time. "Fundamentally, the car handles in a reasonably similar way to last year, which is, I guess, good in many ways, but also [it] still is evident where we have to focus on, so we have a lot of focus on that."
How does McLaren's 2023 pre-season compare to 2022?
McLaren had a difficult pre-season in 2022, with the team experiencing brake problems on their car. Alongside this, former driver Daniel Ricciardo was forced to miss some running after testing positive for COVID-19. While the start of 2023 has not been entirely smooth, Norris feels that it is better than what the team faced last year. "[Things are] a huge amount better than this time last year," the Briton commented. "[There has been] a bit more focus on making sure we came here on top of everything, which I think we pretty much are. There's been a couple little setbacks here and there but, for the most part, the team have done a better job. "We're definitely in a better place, so [it's been] a good start to the season from that perspective but, of course, [there is] still a lot of work [to do], a lot of things we need to keep [on] continuing to focus on."
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