Lando Norris reckons that McLaren will be hard pressed to seal a win in the final leg of the 2023 F1 season, as its best opportunities to gain victory have come and passed.
After struggling to race among the top-ten in the early part of its campaign, McLaren began to turn around its fortunes in Austria in July when it kicked off its comprehensive development programme.
Since, team papya has gone from strength to strength and become a regular top-three contender, with Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri delivering eight podiums to the Woking-based outfit since Silverstone.
However, winning is what’s it’s all about. But Red Bull’s unwavering supremacy this season has been a near-impossible nut to crack, save in Singapore where Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz inflicted to the bulls their only defeat year-to-date.
Norris was hoping to emulate Sainz’s feat at Suzuka or Qatar, two tracks that suited McLaren’s MCL60. To no avail unfortunately.
“Do I think our best chances have gone? I would say yes,” the Briton said in Austin last weekend. “I think Qatar was our best chance of winning a race. And I missed out on that one.
“I don’t want to say no, I don’t say like never. I think there’s no super high-speed, Suzuka-style, Qatar-style circuits left which is where we’re strong.
“I don’t think they’re any good ones [tracks] for us coming up. I think our best have gone.
“I just want to be hopeful that we can do good results and I think we can still fight for podiums but these guys are too quick for me.”
McLaren’s relative weakness remains its car’s pace in slow speed corners, an issue that will come to the fore in Brazil next week, at Interlagos.
“If you looked at the GPS overlays of how bad we are in the slow speed [corners], I’m not looking forward to Brazil,” he said.
“I think we’re going to be pretty shocking there. Vegas and Abu Dhabi are probably the better ones.”
McLaren is hard at work addressing the MCL60’s deficit in slow corners, but it’s not an issue that can be ironed out this season insists team boss Andrea Stella.
“Braking into Turn 11 [at COTA] and then traction out of Turn 11 was the most problematic phase from a car performance point of view,” the Italian asserted.
“It was no surprise, it is to do with bumps and with braking and traction in two very low-speed corners, where we said already that we know the car doesn’t perform very well.
“It has been addressed in development but there is no turnaround in this season to fix this.”
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