Lando Norris believes that McLaren have plenty of “good signs” from their performance in Japan as they delivered their highest scoring round of the season so far.
The outfit bounced back from their unlucky double DNS last time out in China to finish the weekend with both drivers in the top five, Oscar Piastri taking second place in his first Grand Prix start of the year while Norris wound up fifth.
After a quick getaway saw the Briton improve from fifth to third, he struggled to defend against the faster Mercedes of George Russell, who recovered from a poor opening lap to find a way back past Norris and Charles Leclerc.
“It was a good start,” he said after the race. “I think the pace was good and I think we were decent. Clearly the Mercedes was still on another level, but we could have a nice race with the Ferraris.
“It was tricky for the first 15 laps to be quite swamped consistently by the Mercedes behind, which went on to win the race. The Ferraris around us are pretty similar on pace so it was a good fight at times.”
Norris gradually became embroiled in a close battle with the second Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton, with the pair exchanging positions back and forth throughout the latter stint of the Japanese Grand Prix.
He had no choice but to make the move stick after Hamilton was cleared of cutting the chicane to gain an advantage, and finally managed to pass him for good to take McLaren’s total points haul to 28.
Looking back on the contest, Norris said: “You had to push basically every single lap so that bit of it was good – the no degradation, and just to get Lewis at the end. I tried to save the tyres a little bit after the Safety Car restart just because I didn’t think much was going to happen for a while.
“It seemed to pay off – I got him with two laps to go so it was just in time. There are good signs. As soon as I had clean air, which I had on two laps of the whole race – the last lap and one lap in the middle – the car really came alive quite a bit more.
“I think in clean air the car was good. Good signs, just if I could’ve qualified higher, if I could’ve done more laps this weekend, things could have been more positive. Otherwise, a good result for the team.”
The reigning World Champion has been distinctly unlucky with technical challenges in the early part of the season – he could only complete minimal running in FP2 and FP3 while McLaren worked to amend a suspected hydraulic issue and an ERS (Electrical Recovery System) problem.
Asked whether he felt the team had taken a step forward, he responded: “It’s more that things were just better. We’ve not really made a step. We improved the engine side of things and maximised the power unit.
“It was also easier to do that around here, but from a car point of view, we’re still a long way off so I think that’s a good sign that we still finished second and fifth. The car is still a good challenge, so in a way that’s a positive thing, not a negative thing.
“It shows that if we improve things quite a bit more, or even just a bit more, we can be quick again. We can be very strong and more confident, so this weekend was a good sign for us.”
