Norris “making too many mistakes” due to how he has to drive this year's McLaren
Norris ended the day 14th fastest in second practice for the Spanish Grand Prix, over 0.7s off the pace set by Max Verstappen.
It was a tough day for McLaren, who continue to languish well behind the top five teams.
In Monaco, McLaren were slower than AlphaTauri in dry conditions, but showed blistering pace in the rain later in the race.
Norris has often spoken about how “tricky” the McLaren is to drive in terms of handling - and despite a number of upgrades in recent rounds - not a lot has changed.
“Tough. It’s probably been quite a tough day,” Norris said. “It’s been one of our trickier Fridays I would say in terms of pace, setup.
“We struggled with a few different things in FP1 - some of which we improved a little bit, some which we’re still struggling a little bit with just in terms of the handling, putting a lap together.
“I am making too many mistakes because of how I feel like I have to drive the car at the minute. I think the pace can be there. Tomorrow is a new day.”
“Very important” weekend for McLaren
Sky Sports’ David Croft believes this weekend’s race in Barcelona will be decisive in McLaren’s form for the rest of F1 2023.
“These upgrades came in Baku. Lando said: ‘right, we’ve got the upgrades on the car, it takes us where we should have been at the start of the season and we were playing catch up with everyone else’,” he said. “I would say this is a very important weekend for them because it’s Barcelona.
“So what they’ve put on the car since Baku, they want to test at a track that rewards aerodynamic efficiency but if it doesn’t work for them here it’s like do we have to go back to the drawing board again?”
