Norris: Most of McLaren's pace in Melbourne 'just the track'

Lando Norris says McLaren is improving its understanding of its MCL36 but insists most of his impressive performance in qualifying in Melbourne on Saturday was "just the track".

Norris put his team among the top-ten in qualifying for the first time this season, the Briton clocking in P4, 0.835s adrift from Ferrari poleman Charles Leclerc, while teammate Daniel Ricciardo concluded the day in seventh place.

"Very happy, it’s nice to be P4," said Norris. "It’s a good reward for the team and the best we could have done today by quite a long way.

"It’s good to be back in Q3 given where we’ve been over the last few weeks. Hopefully today sets us up for a good race tomorrow and some decent points."

Norris had been fastest earlier in the day in FP3, which augured well for qualifying. However, the McLaren charger believes the Albert Park circuit is a big factor in the performance of the papaya squad's car this weekend.

"There are some things which we have done well, and we still managed to extract naturally a bit more performance out of the car by understanding a few more things, and going a little bit more in a different direction with the set-up," Norris said.

"But at the same time, I think the majority of it is just the track. We've not brought anything that has changed much, and it's not like we can do that much more with the set-up to make it go a lot quicker.

"It's more 70-30, or 80-20 in terms of 80 is just track and 20 is just hard work."

• 2022 Australian Grand Prix - Qualifying results

Ricciardo also recognized that McLaren's car was well suited to the track, but the Aussie also highlighted his team's improved confidence in its 2022 contender.

"It's not like we brought something crazy different this weekend," said the local hero. "I think it's still probably more of a track dependent performance at the moment.

"But yeah, I think we're building good confidence with the car and being able to push it, getting closer to the limit. That also helps."

McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl echoed his drivers' comments but stressed that the team's small upgrades were also proving beneficial, while the Woking-based outfit is also playing catch-up versus its rivals in terms of mileage.

"For sure, it's the track layout which suits our car more with the current package that we are having, this more fluent track layout similar to Jeddah as well," he said.

"Then I think in terms of performance, we brought some small upgrades which worked, and every little bit helps.

"But then also we shouldn't forget that we started the season really on the back foot, with missing out on a lot of laps at the Bahrain test.

"We had to learn still a lot about this new car in the first two race weekends, and we've had now the chance to apply these learnings.

"That's where performance is also coming from. And I think if you put that altogether, that made us again a bit more competitive here, which is great.

"It's simply a great reward, a boost also for the team, to simply keep going and keep working hard to bring more performance to the track."

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter