Lando Norris admitted that he made too many mistakes on Friday's opening day of running in Barcelona - and suggested that it was because of his struggles getting to grips with the current handling of the McLaren MCL60.
After finishing in the points last week in Monaco, Norris was just P11 at the end of first practice at the Circuit de Catalunya, and dropped to P14 in the late afternoon session.
"We struggled with a few different things in FP1, some of which we improved a bit and some I am still struggling with," he told the media in the paddock after the end of the session.
"In terms of the handling and putting it all together, [I'm] making too many mistakes because of how I feel I have to drive the car at the minute," he admitted.
“After a very different track in Monaco, it took me a few laps to get back into the swing of things here," he commented. "We struggled a little bit with the car from the off, but we improved in FP2.
"It's been a tough day, one of our trickier Fridays in terms of pace and set-up," he added. "The pace can be there-ish, probably towards the back end of it."
"It’s not bad, we just need to work on driveability and take a step forward ahead of [Saturday's] sessions," he added.
His struggles meant he was unsure whether the reprofiling of the final corners reverting to the old high-speed double right-hander to finish the lap.would contribute to better overtaking this weekend.
"I did some following. Sometimes it feels a bit better, it can be easy to make a mistake in the final corner, but other times it felt a bit worse," he said. "I don't have an answer yet ... We will find out in the race on Sunday."
Norris' team mate, rookie driver Oscar Piastri, scored his seconds points finish last weekend and fared slightly better than Norris in Friday's practice, ending the day in P12.
“It’s been a solid Friday with many laps on the board, helped by the extra experimental tyres provided by Pirelli," he said. "We’ve done some aerodynamic work today with rakes to support short-term and long-term development.
"We also worked on our understanding of the tyres, which is going to be crucial here, given the expectation of it being a multi-stop race.
"Our competitiveness contained no surprises, and our task now is to do a good job overnight, to give us a car tomorrow that is a Q3 contender and capable of scoring points on Sunday.”
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