De facto McLaren team leader Lando Norris has described his team as ‘pretty poor’ in recent seasons as he looks to the operation’s future.
Norris is in his fifth season of F1, all of them with McLaren, having spent two years alongside Carlos Sainz before being joined by Daniel Ricciardo in 2021.
This year, he’s become the team’s lead driver with rookie Oscar Piastri stepping alongside after Ricciardo agreed to part ways with the team a year early.
It was a difficult start to 2023 with a car that missed its development targets, though things have turned around in recent races following a significant upgrade arriving at the Austrian Grand Prix.
That was an important moment for the team which looked to have lost its way in 2022 and had fallen further off the pace this year.
But two podiums in as many races for Norris, and an F1 Sprint second place for Piastri in Belgium, heralded a morale-boosting turnaround.
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The on-track improvement coincides with developments off-track, with new hirings set to join the team over the coming months while key infrastructure projects are also due to come online in the near future.
“That’s something I look forward to and therefore I’m very happy about, because the last few seasons have been pretty poor,” Norris told Speedcafe.
“I can honestly say they’ve been pretty poor in terms of, as a team, with our facility – our facility looks amazing, but it’s not even up to the spec of what it has been of other teams.
“These little things also, wind tunnel, simulator, all these things, we’re now on track to what we should be doing and probably should have done years ago.”
Those projects, plus the restructuring of the technical department done by Andrea Stella in the lead-up to the start of the season, leave Norris buoyant.
However, he’s also “impatient” and bolt-on performance is what feeds his motivation.
“Those are the things that I love, just because it’s direct,” he explained.
“The future is just too far away, what’s the point speaking of things so far away?
“So my motivation is just my love for what I do, simply, I really enjoyed doing what I’m doing. I have since I was a kid, that’s why I do what I do here.
“I can’t think of doing any other jobs, like having a job in anything else, you know.
“My motivation is to stay in Formula 1 and do what I love to do. I think that’s quite easy enough to stay motivated.
“If that doesn’t motivate you, then I don’t know what will.
“Theirs is some… trying to complete a story with McLaren, to go from where we were years ago, this kind of bumpy road we’ve been on the last couple, to feeling a bit more positive about what things are coming our way in the near future and in the far future.”
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