Lando Norris has shared his optimism for a turnaround in performance at McLaren after suffering a “shocking” weekend in Monaco, with the Briton confirming that they’ve worked to find a solution to their poor reliability.
The reigning Teams’ Champions were significantly off the pace over one lap in the Principality, and their woes continued on race day when Norris faced issues with the power unit that forced him to retire the car.
They salvaged some points as Oscar Piastri finished fourth in a chaotic race, which also marked McLaren’s 1000th Grand Prix, but Norris was left hoping for a resurgence at Barcelona this weekend.
Asked whether the team had found the root of their problems in Monaco, Norris said: “We have to be optimistic. Of course it just wasn’t a good weekend altogether. The result for Oscar ended up not being too bad but it was just a tough weekend on pace and, for me, reliability.
“Obviously not finishing the race was just painful. The whole team, HPP and McLaren have all been on it to try and understand things, fix things, try and make sure it doesn’t happen again but it’s also racing sometimes. Head down.
“I’m more optimistic for this weekend than I have been. I just wasn’t the most optimistic for Monaco and it turned out to be accurate. Happy to be back here and try to show the signs of pace that we had both in Montreal and Miami.”
McLaren appeared to close the gap to frontrunners Mercedes in Rounds 4 and 5 as Norris and Piastri finished on the podium in both the Sprint and Miami Grand Prix, before the Briton then secured P2 in the Canada Sprint – the last time he scored points.
Since then, they’ve endured a downturn in performance and reliability as Norris also retired from the Canadian Grand Prix, making him eager to return to the form they discovered previously.
“I think [this is] a weekend where it’ll give us some reassurances and some confidence,” added Norris. “I think we’re being harsh on ourselves because Monaco was that bad. It wasn’t even just a poor performance, it was a shocking performance. Montreal was not a bad weekend. Miami was a pretty great weekend.
“Only three weeks ago, we were very happy. Monaco just hurt us a lot, especially because we won there last year so it was just a tough feeling to go from last year to this year. I think we’re still confident that we can return to a strong performance here.
“It will be good for us for the rest of the year and the confidence of the whole team to know that we can fight for podiums again and, hopefully not too long, fight for some wins again.”
Despite his strong result in Monaco, Piastri admitted that McLaren’s pace wasn’t deserving of P4 and they capitalised on the retirements and penalties for those further ahead to gain positions.
With one of the calendar’s biggest outliers now behind them, Piastri similarly predicted a smoother weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, which is regarded as a good indicator of performance due to its more traditional layout.
Reflecting on their season so far, the Australian said: “It certainly has been up and down, that’s for sure. Obviously Monaco was tough last week. Of course we were still able to salvage a pretty reasonable result on my side but we clearly weren’t quick enough to challenge even for the position we finished.
“Hopefully we can improve from that. Even Canada, until Sunday, was certainly not bad so hopefully we’ve learned a few things about some of the conditions we’re in, some of the corner types, and hopefully it’s track specific.
“We’ll find out this weekend, so it’s going to be a good test on a more normal circuit here to see where everyone stacks up.”
