Lando Norris has enjoyed an impressive start to his 2021 campaign, establishing himself as F1's midfield leader, and yet the McLaren driver says he's still learning how to drive his "tricky" Mercedes-powered MCL35M.
Norris followed up his fourth-place finish in Bahrain with a podium at Imola before crossing the checkered flag P5 in last weekend's Portuguese GP.
But the young Briton says he's still familiarizing himself with the process of extracting the most from his 2021 car which, compared to last year's MCL35, features aero changes and a Mercedes power unit in place of the Renault engine he was accustomed to last year.
Norris says the changes have led to a "tricky" car to drive, but one for which his confidence is growing.
"It's tricky," Norris told the media ahead of this weekend's Spanish GP. "I mean, the cars definitely changed a little bit compared to last year and how you have to drive it.
"I wasn't on top of the car in Bahrain already. So Daniel's driving style almost was better in Bahrain than it was for me. I learned a lot already there to then improve into Imola and then into Portugal.
©McLaren
"So I'm still learning how to drive the car and how to maximize it. And it's definitely not an easy car to drive in a different way to last year.
"But I'm not sure, like I honestly don't want to say everything, but I feel a bit more confident.
"I just know what to do with every session we do from FP1 to FP2 to all the way to the race, things I need to be working on looking out on trying and comments back to the team and so on. So it's just it's not necessarily always the car side of things.
"It can also be more behind the scenes, the work we do as a team, which adds to the performance."
So far, Norris has displayed a remarkable level of consistency on race weekends, and the 21-year-old hopes to uphold his performance in the wake of F1's Mercedes and Red Bull front-runners, but he'll be taking things one race at a time.
"I think things have just gone very well for us," Norris explained.
"I feel like I'm doing a good job myself with qualifying and putting the laps in when I need to. Maybe not so much in Imola or Portugal in Q3 run two but everything apart from that has gone very well.
"And then the race as well, on the restarts, the launches, a lot of things are going well, but it's just as easy for it to go not so well, so I want to continue what we're doing.
"Being behind the Mercedes and Red Bull at the moment is still the target and where we believe we can be.
"But I'm just not getting my hopes up too much for every race, we'll try to do what we're doing at the moment and continue it but it very easily could be a P6, a P7, or a P8 so it's just I'm realistic.
"But I'm still hopeful that we can continue what we're doing."
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