'Better feeling' for Norris, but still struggling for balance

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Lando Norris insisted that McLaren had made progress on last week's season opener, but admitted that he was struggling to get to grips with balance on the MCL38 heading into the Saudi Arabia GP race weekend.

Norris finished Thursday's practice outside the top ten. He was P12 and almost a second slower than top rated Fernando Alonso at the end of the evening session, having been seventh quickest in the heat of daytime.

“A reasonable day," was his summing up. "A bit of a better feeling than we had in Bahrain, but there were certain corners where we’re struggling to get the balance in the right window.

"There’s a few bits we need to improve," he accepted. "But on the whole, I think it was a pretty decent day. Some work to do but still a good start to the weekend.”

His team mate Oscar Piastri finished ahead of him on the timesheets, ending FP2 in tenth place which was a five place improvement on his first practice pace. However he was still 0.767s off Alonso's pace.

Read also: Alonso finishes on top in second practice

“An up and down first day, I would say," acknowledged the Australian after the end of the day's track activity. There’s been good moments where we’ve looked quite quick, other moments not so much.

"It’s a little bit difficult to tell where exactly we are but I think we’re somewhat in the mix again, which is positive. We have some fine tuning to do for tomorrow, but I think we look ok.”

Team principal Andrea Stella had an upbeat view of the day, despite the subdued performance when it came to the timesheets. “It’s been a smooth day of practice here in Saudi Arabia," he said.

"We tested several set-up options to optimise the car for this circuit, which is demanding in terms both of top speed and car balance.

"The data gathered today will help us understand the best approaches for qualifying and the race.

"We have a lot of analysis to do tonight to put all of that together and prepare the most competitive package for the remainder of the weekend.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.