Lando Norris Says Watching McLaren’s 1.5 Second Baku Deficit Felt Like a Knife in the Heart

• Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri finished Thursday’s opening practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix roughly 1.5 seconds off pace setter George Russell.
• McLaren lost track time in the first session after floorboard issues on the upgraded MCL40 forced mechanics to patch the car with cable ties.
• Norris said the gap felt like “a little knife in the heart,” while McLaren’s Rob Marshall said the new parts still need to be dialled in.

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A Cracked Floor and Cable Ties Summed Up McLaren’s Day in Baku

Lando Norris has called his and McLaren’s gap to the front of the field on the opening day of practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix “a little knife in the heart.” The team ended Thursday roughly 1.5 seconds off the pace around the Baku City Circuit.

McLaren brought a fresh upgrade package to the MCL40 for the Baku weekend, with new parts fitted to the sidepods, engine cover, floor, diffuser and rear suspension. The introduction did not go smoothly. Floorboard issues in first practice cost Norris and team mate Oscar Piastri track time while mechanics worked on a fix.

A Fix Made From Cable Ties

Mechanics used tie wraps to patch a cracked part on the car after spotting the issue in the first session, a fix McLaren’s Chief Technical Officer and Chief Designer Rob Marshall described as a way to stop the damage getting worse while a permanent solution was found.

“In truth, it was a minor issue,” Marshall said. “We spotted a crack in a part and those tie wraps were added to mitigate that, to stop it getting any worse while we work out what to do properly. We could have left it. It might have been alright if we had left it. We didn’t want to as we’re short of bits.”

Marshall pointed out that disruption of this kind comes with the territory in Formula 1. “You look up and down the grid, things go wrong,” he said. “You’ve got to remember that we’re racing prototypes. We do our best to simulate what the conditions are, but ultimately you come to a track and it’s not quite as you expect.”

With the fix in place, Norris and Piastri returned for second practice and picked up more laps. Even so, the pair wound up around 1.5 seconds behind pace setter George Russell, who topped the session for Mercedes.

‘It’s Pretty Pants’

Norris backed out of a stronger lap late in second practice and summed up his day bluntly. “We’re miles off,” he said. “I mean, we’re up there, let’s say, relative… We’re in the position we expected to be in, but at 1.5 seconds off the pace. It’s pretty pants.”

Asked how much of that deficit McLaren could realistically find overnight, Norris admitted he did not know. “I have no idea,” he said. “We’ll see what work we can do. The car didn’t feel that bad, so it’s just a little knife in the heart when you see how far off you are.”

He was equally blunt when asked about his confidence behind the wheel of the MCL40. “I don’t really care how confident I am in the car, I just care about the pace, and we’re not very fast,” Norris said. “I don’t care. I drive whatever car I get given, I just want it to be quick, and it’s not very quick at the minute. We’ll see what we can change for tomorrow.”

Early Signs From the New Package

Marshall said McLaren’s engineers were still working through how to extract performance from Thursday’s new components, even as the underlying data looked promising. “We put a lot of new bits on the car today,” he said. “A lot of learning, a few cliches… I could roll a few more out… but obviously you put your package on and you need to learn how to dial it in. I don’t think we’re there yet.”

“I think the car seems to be doing what we want it to do,” he added. “The aero map kind of seems pretty happy, it’s just a matter of dialling in the performance now. It’s early days. A bit of a disrupted first session, but we’ll see how we get on tomorrow.”

Friday Awaits

McLaren head into the second day of practice at the Baku City Circuit still working out where their pace has gone, with Norris and Piastri needing a step forward if they are to close the gap to the front before qualifying. The team’s focus for Friday is on translating Thursday’s new parts into lap time, with Marshall stressing that the numbers behind the car’s aerodynamics already look encouraging, though the raw pace has not shown it yet.

For Norris, the frustration on Thursday was less about the car’s behaviour and more about the numbers on the timing screens. He made clear that comfort in the cockpit means little without matching lap time, a sentiment that leaves McLaren with a clear brief heading into Friday’s running at the Baku City Circuit.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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