Norris looks ahead after Bahrain GP: 'We are close behind Mercedes and Red Bull'

For McLaren, 2021 looks to be a very promising year. In Bahrain, they drove at the head of the midfield and if Red Bull Racing or Mercedes make a mistake, the chance of podium finishes for the team of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo is very high. The Briton also finished fourth in the desert, much to the delight of his team.

"I think we can be happy with this. We finished ahead of Perez, also because of the problems he had. However, we managed to qualify higher, not because of a mistake, but because he wasn't fast enough," Norris proudly explained in conversation with Formel1.de. All weekend McLaren tried to play down all the hype surrounding the type and dampen expectations, but the speed on Sunday was clearly better than other teams.

Close to Red Bull this season

After an exciting opening phase, Norris was able to find his pace and it was an easy race. "After that it was just making sure the tyres stayed good and holding the speed. It was actually a boring race. I never really had to push. Fourth place is a good result and also holds a lot of points". In the end Sergio Perez came up short to really attack Norris for fourth place.

This ensures that McLaren are looking at the rest of the season positively. "Hopefully we can be a bit closer to the top at some circuits. I don't know if we will win the title 'best of the rest' again this season, because I don't know what the speed of AlphaTauri was. I think they were pretty fast as well," Norris concluded.