McLaren was able to bring a pretty extensive kit to Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix opening day practice but ultimately admitted the team was “miles off” the pace. Norris was also sixth in the second session (1.484 seconds behind GEORGE RUSSELL) as Mercedes dominated both sessions.
But McLaren has come to Azerbaijan to see if the racecar’s latest aerodynamic advances will enable him to narrow the gap with his competitors. Norris is having a nice hot streak out of the get-go, with a podium finish in three of four starts and two victories. The first day in Baku was quite a different situation however.
The car wasn’t going well on Friday, as Norris was very dissatisfied with the results.“Yes we are in the pool,” Norris added. “Relatively, on the pace we think we should be on, but we’re 1.5secs slower, pretty pants.”
Looking back at our success, he commented that he was “disappointed that we are not even there [as the leader] overnight, and we will have to work hard to “figure out where we went.
It was even worse as McLaren had announced a big change to the Baku weekend. Changes are featured around the main sidepod air inlets, engine cover, floor and diffuser with the goal of enhancing the car’s aerodynamics.
The early result data from the car indicated it was acting like it should, based on the simulations the team had done, says Chief Technical Officer Rob Marshall. But he said the team was only beginning to get the most out of the upgrading.
However, Mercedes had a very successful day. Russell was the leader of both his practice and took 0.552 seconds to win FP2 ahead of teammate Kimi Antonelli.
This caused Antonelli to have a more difficult day due to a hydraulic issue in FP1. This caused him to sit out for a chunk of duration of the track time and Mercedes worked on his car making an assortment of repairs during the initial phase of FP2.
Also, this was the time when Antonelli went straight into performance running on the soft tyre when he returned to the track instead of a change in engines.
Antonelli “Never called it in doubt” as he completed just about a half of the running of Russell, but always had faith in his prospects going into qualifying.
He said the team has done the best it could in the restricted time for running and was “comfortable in the car,” but there were other things that had to be attended to.
First session’s challenger was Max Verstappen, who was also Mercedes’ third fastest in FP2. But, in the second session, the Red Bull guy was 0.827 seconds behind Russell.
Ferrari, too, had previous to differentiate them from Mercedes. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were in tow behind the pack leaders but both were over 2 seconds back.
Hamilton conceded that Ferrari weren’t particularly fast but team principal Frederic Vasseur was critical of the weighting of the car.
But McLaren’s rivals weren’t throwing in the towel just because of the practice times.
The official of Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache said that the McLaren seemed to be just a bit quicker than Red Bull or about equal. Another criticism Ferrari boss Vasseur made of McLaren was that he had not finished his laps in the same style as some of the competitors.
Deputy team principal Bradley Lord said there could be some shortcomings in the gaps either.
This means there’s a lot for McLaren to research before qualification. The team’s upgrades seem to be going according to their original data so now the challenge faced is to find the combination to make the most of the unique street circuit in Baku.
There were problems at other times on the grid as well. For the second race weekend in a row, Racing Bulls rider Arvid Lindblad crashed at the casted chicane before the castle section of the race track.
Also, there was a huge change in the car with the main thrust being on weight reduction in the car with Williams. Spanish team-mates Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz were involved in a collision with former teammates Jenson Button and Mark Webber, but managed to avoid any extreme measures.
After experiencing trouble with his brakes, Sainz told a pro-timer he felt his performance improve as it was a day he expected improvement from it, but added that it was “scrappy.” The car “felt better in overall” but Williams’ appearance was a little more towards midfield than we would like to see,” he added.
McClarens stated that he’s now thinking about the football interview. Before they are qualified they must analyse their data and understand why the pace does not match that which they had expected from their team and what improvements they must make to be qualified.
Norris is one of the better performers that’s come along in the past few races but on the opening day of Baku he proved that his past records don’t relate to pace at a new track in the immediate term.
Have a long way to go to the weekend’s pivotal moments if Mercedes are to be considered the benchmark and you won’t find the likes of Red Bull or Ferrari doing anything too wrong to make gains.
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