Norris demands more from McLaren: 'Aston Martin and Ferrari show it can be done'

Lando Norris does not want to speak of a crisis at McLaren, but the Brit is clear about one thing: things must improve. The team management often points to the new wind tunnel, but the lack of it should not be an excuse for the current performance, according to Norris.

Norris is entering his fifth season in Formula 1 and, as part of McLaren, he had naturally hoped for more. McLaren competed for world titles often enough in the past, but the last time the Woking-based team really competed was in 2010. In fact, the last title dates back to 2008, when Lewis Hamilton won his first world title.

Norris demands more from McLaren

The ambitions are there for Norris, though. ''Where did I want to be? It's clear, but where we all want to be is clear: we want to be towards the top. And I think that's everyone's dream, it’s every team's dream in the whole grid. So I think what Aston have done is this clear example and what Ferrari did between ’21 and ‘22 was a clear example of what we need to achieve and want to achieve. And it's clear that it's achievable. So we just got to go out and do it. I think we have the people, we have so many things that we need. We're not doing a good enough job with what we have,'' Norris said at the press conference.

McLaren has repeatedly identified 2024 as the year to perform. After all, 2023 will see the completion of its own wind tunnel and then all excuses will be gone. Yet Norris believes that wind tunnel is not blissful. More needs to be achieved even with current resources.

''Yeah, infrastructure always helps but we should be doing better than we are now with what we have.'' Norris knows that in a season it will be harder to close the gap with the top, although he also sees a bright spot. ''It's not like we need to change philosophy or change car or anything like that. A lot of what we have already is working well, as Andrea has mentioned, what we have in the wind tunnel and what we have on track is correlating well at the same time and we have obviously a lot of new things coming,'' the Brit concludes positively.