Norris handed biggest MCL60 upgrade since Austria for Singapore GP

Lando Norris will head into his Singapore Grand Prix weekend as the recipient of a major update on McLaren's MCL60, the biggest since the transformative upgrade introduced by the team in Austria.

Only Norris will benefit from the change at Marina Bay as McLaren did not have enough time to produce a second complete package for Oscar Piastri.

The Aussie will nevertheless have a selection of new parts on his own car before it is brought up to date in time for next week's Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka.

Norris revealed that the primary objective of the revisions is to address the MCL60's weakness in low speeds this year.

"Probably since Austria, it is the thing that we believe will kind of help us move forward the most since then," said the Briton as he described the magnitude of the upgrade.

"Obviously, we've not run it on the track yet and so we don't want to say too much until we've actually got it to work properly but it's a good step.

"The team have worked hard to get it on one of the cars here, and then we'll have the rest in Japan too. So it is an exciting couple of weekends for us."

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McLaren enjoyed the impact of its Austrian update immediately. Norris says that swift fulfilment has strengthened McLaren's confidence that its latest package will also produce a speedy step forward.

"Sometimes we would put stuff on and it's not really delivered to what we wanted or what it should have done," he said.

"But definitely up to Austria and how much we kind of progressed since then, it gives me more hope.

"It's also a bit more slower speed biased, which is a bit different to what we had in Austria. This is our first time we've been able to really try to target that a bit more."

Over the summer, and despite several noteworthy performances – including a pair of first row starts – Norris has been vocal about his difficulties in getting on top of McLaren's charger, often wishing that it easier to drive.

The Briton doesn't expect the car's latest update to make it any less tougher to handle as far as he is concerned.

"I think it's not going to help in exactly the places where, from a driving style point of view, I would probably want it, but it should just help with a little bit of overall loads, cornering speeds and just kind of consistency, tyre wear traction, things like that," he explained.

"It is just performance enhancement, it's not like something to make me feel better in the car."

And yet the 23-year-old says that improving his comfort behind the wheel and completely ironing out the MCL60's weakness in slow-speed corners are key to narrowing McLaren's gap to Red Bull.

"It's down to the same things every time, where we just can't change with a bit of aero balance or mechanical balance," he said.

"No matter what we try we are bad and we struggle, so I think those things let us down in quite a few races. And even at some places we go to, we're extremely competitive on 90% of the track, it's just certain things which then make us look bad.

"If we didn't have some of these bad things, we would be very strong and a lot more competitive and competing for podiums.

"If we can fix a little bit of this slow speed [weakness], if I can get a bit more what I believe the car needs to take that next step - a bit of it is what we hopefully will have this weekend, a bit of it will be what I want from a driving style point of view - that's when I'm confident we can take the fight to the majority of the teams, including Red Bull."

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