McLaren believes Lando Norris’ 4th-place finish at the Austrian Grand Prix is a very significant achievement as behind the wheel of an upgraded MCL60 car he achieved his best result since last year’s Singapore race.
The Austrian phase of the championship saw the premiere of a slew of technical updates, which McLaren initially planned to present at Silverstone, but managed to prepare such a car a week earlier. And these innovations turned out to be quite effective: Lando showed the 4th result in qualifying on Friday, the 3rd in the shootout on Saturday, when the running order was determined in the sprint, and finished fourth on Sunday.
The only bad moment of the weekend for him was the sprint, in which he lost a lot of positions due to a malfunctioning system that prevented the engine from stalling.
When Andrea Stella, the team leader, went to the press after Sunday’s race, applause rang out from somewhere in the bowels of the McLaren motorhome.
“I think this applause can be considered an answer to your question,” said Stella when asked to judge Norris’ work during the Austrian weekend. – As a rule, such noise can be heard in the team’s camper and away area when your rider is on the podium or winning, so it’s nice to hear such a reaction to finishing in the top five. This is a very important milestone on the way to the top.
To some extent, we expected the new items to have an effect, but thanks to them we added so much that we were able to compete with the cars of the second group teams. In general, we’re a bit surprised that we were able to fight Mercedes and Aston Martin, and sometimes we weren’t even that far from Ferrari. Although the business of the Scuderia, it seems, is also improving.
But although our speed was a pleasant surprise, I advise everyone to be careful about their assessments, because it is possible that we achieved such a result in Austria due to the favorable conditions and the peculiarities of Lando’s flying style. Of course we now have to wait and see how everything will turn out at Silverstone, because it is quite possible that the picture will be closer to reality there.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
