“It Was Painful”: Despite Miraculous Recovery, Distraught Lando Norris Exposes McLaren’s Achilles Heel

Changing and evolving your car constantly is an extremely inevitable and vital part of life in Formula 1. McLaren showcased the benefits of it with incredible performances in the Austrian, British, and Hungarian GPs. However, right before the break at the Belgian GP, the team suffered a massive shock. The papaya team suffered heartbreak at the start, with Oscar Piastri’s MCL60 being retired after picking up damage. However, could’ve been worse with Lando Norris’s race in the dumps from the start. Although the Brit made a miraculous recovery, Lando Norris couldn’t help but expose the team’s Achilles heel.

The Brit has been leading the line for McLaren since the first upgrade package. The Brit instantly found performance with the upgrade and even finished on the podium in his first home race. This emotionally charged result received a boost as Norris secured another podium in the race on the Hungaroring. However, the British-Belgian driver was on his way to a disastrous race if it wasn’t for the perfect timing of the pit stop. Despite that, Norris couldn’t help but expose the MCL60’s massively poor performance on the hard tries.

“I think I only overtook two or three people today and that was all in the corners,” Norris said. After a brief pause, he continued, “Yeah, it was painful! The beginning was so painful. But we tried to then go onto the hard, we got done over again just the hard was not a good enough tire.”

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The team’s decision to put Norris on hard tires definitely did not pan out. However, it was the unexpected pit stop for softs that changed the game for McLaren. Although even the stint on softs did not come without its challenges.

All’s well that ends well for Lando Norris after an unexpected scenario

After explaining how the hard compound tires did not work as expected, the Brit explained the team was on the trial-and-error method. This is exactly why McLaren pit Norris for a set of soft tires. That became a blessing in disguise for the Brit and the team.

Norris revealed how he found himself in P7. He said, “So we had one thing left to try and that was to put the soft tire on. This was already on like the 24 or something, 25 so I was expecting to box again for another soft at some point. But we were somehow in seventh and we undercut like 10 cars I think which I was pretty surprised by. But I thought I was going to be boxing again and then like okay we’re going to try and go to the end.”

He then revealed his concern about tire degradation. He continued, “Then I was like I pushed the tire so much in the beginning. I thought my race was going to be pretty much over again and I was going to start struggling too much. But we kept the tires alive and still managed to finish P7 and stay ahead of Esteban. He was closing quite quickly in the last couple of laps so, I’m happy!” 

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Despite the positive outcome, the Papaya team needs to find out what went wrong for them at Spa. The three-part upgrade cannot be failing already. Let’s hope, for the team’s sake, McLaren can find out answers during the summer break.