Did McLaren miss the step up to the top teams? 'We are behind schedule'

For McLaren, the mood will not be entirely positive after the end of the test week in Bahrain. In Barcelona, the team from Woking still looked tremendously fast, but in Bahrain it didn't seem to go to plan. Partly because of Daniel Ricciardo's positive covid test, which meant that Lando Norris had to take care of the entire test week.

In total, the Brit drove 200 laps in the three days for McLaren, a huge number. For comparison, the Bahrain Grand Prix is a total of 56 laps. Norris' lap count could have been even more, but due to brake problems he also spent a lot of time in the garage. Speaking to Formula1.com, he looks back on the test week.

Norris not satisfied after test week

"It's been far from ideal. It’s not been the smoothest of tests for us. It’s been quite limited in Bahrain. I think Barcelona was a good one but here we’ve encountered quite a few more problems, which have limited the amount of laps we’ve done by quite a huge amount."

Norris also knows where those problems lie. "Especially on the long runs, the lower-fuel and shorter runs we’ve been able to do, but not the high-fuel runs. We’re behind where we want to be, where we need to be. It's not great but we’re getting through as much as we can. We’re definitely making progress, but definitely not in the position we want to be in," concludes McLaren's young Briton.

The team seems to be the head of the midfield, but everything indicates that McLaren would have liked to make the step towards the top teams this year, as Ferrari seems to have succeeded in doing.