Lando Norris and teammate Daniel Ricciardo led the team to fourth place in the constructors' championship last year.
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Lando Norris has admitted that the mood at McLaren has sunk as the team sits eighth in the championship heading into this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix – but the team is still determined to push on and recover. Norris and teammate Daniel Ricciardo – who will race in his home Grand Prix for the first time in two years – led the team to fourth place in the constructors’ championship last year, but they are only one point ahead of scoreless Aston Martin and Williams after two races this season. Before starting points tally with a P7 finish and six points in Jeddah, the Briton was asked about the McLaren mentality.
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“You can’t lie. If you have points and you have success and you have podiums, there’s always a rise in morale… I think there’s expectations, of course, and… as racing people, we want to have success and do well,” the British driver said. “We’re never going to be as happy [being] P16 compared to if we were P8 or P7 or whatever. So, there’s always just a little bit of our happiness gone.”
Mercedes is trailing Red Bull and Ferrari, while Aston Martin has zero points after Sebastian Vettel missed the first two races due to Covid-19. Norris went on to say that his team is still fighting back in what is expected to be a long development battle.
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“I think the key thing is everyone’s still very motivated. And even if it is two months of struggling, or six, seven, eight races of struggling, I think everyone’s quite confident and just motivated within themselves and with other people, that we can make good progress again, and get back to where we should be.”
“So yes, I don’t think we can be happy with where we are. I think that’s the point of what I’m trying to say: we can’t be happy, and therefore we’re not, but the important thing is we’re all motivated still to get back to where we know we should be,” Norris added.
Norris, who finished 12th in his only Australian Grand Prix appearance, and Ricciardo, who has a best finish of P4 at home, will take on a new-look Albert Park circuit this weekend in the hopes of improving on their rocky start to 2022.
