While Mercedes and Red Bull dominate the headlines, Lando Norris and Neil Houldey provide insights into McLaren’s progress
Nothing is more dangerous than taking early test figures at face value. Even though McLaren is leading the mileage charts in Bahrain and is among the frontrunners in the timesheets, the team does not seem particularly euphoric about the current state of affairs.
The paddock in Sakhir seems divided into two camps: some believe that Mercedes still has an ace up its sleeve, while others are putting Red Bull and its Ford-powered engines on a pedestal and wondering how the team manages to generate electrical energy so efficiently that it can deliver significantly more power on the straights.
But what about defending champions McLaren? Together with Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari, the world champion team currently seems to form a leading group. However, reigning world champion Lando Norris is not yet exuding much optimism. He emphasizes that the MCL40 is currently not only behind Red Bull, but also behind Ferrari.
“They seem to have a very good power unit,” says Norris, referring to Red Bull’s impressive GPS data. “They can deliver a lot of energy and are very efficient. We need to understand how they do that. There are always things I can do a little better, both on the McLaren side and at Mercedes. They know there are areas where we need to improve.”
The Briton is even more explicit: “Red Bull seems to have done a very good job, and the Ford power unit seems extremely strong. Hats off to them. But at the moment, they are a good step ahead of us. When someone has such an advantage in energy delivery, it’s simply free lap time. It’s as if you can just drive faster without any effort.”
Norris also sees room for improvement in the chassis: “In terms of the car, they seem to be performing well, and we don’t seem to be quite at Ferrari’s level at the moment. I know we will improve, but I’m sure they will too. We need to make a pretty big leap to be sure we can beat them.”
Collecting data instead of chasing times
Norris, who finished the second day of testing in second place, half a second behind Charles Leclerc’s best time in the morning, explains that his 149 laps on Thursday at least provided plenty of data.
After the shakedown in Barcelona, where they covered significantly fewer miles than Mercedes or Ferrari, this was sorely needed. “There are still a lot of things we need to understand, but I would say today was a good day for me to understand a lot and gain more confidence in the car,” Norris continued.
“It’s fun to look at the details and try to translate the information we’ve gathered into a better powertrain.”
“But right now, we just need more efficiency. That’s not an easy thing to do, otherwise they would have done it already. We need to learn how to turn the tide in the next few days.”
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Neil Houldey, Technical Director of Engineering at McLaren, tells Sky he is confident that the Woking-based team will receive the necessary support from Mercedes to be competitive in energy management.
“Understanding where you lose energy and where you recover it will be extremely important,” explains Houldey. “We have to get the maximum performance out of it. That’s what you see in some GPS corners. You see teams that can release more energy and teams that—whether from the same or a different manufacturer—use the energy at different points in the lap.”
Houldey concludes: “I know that Mercedes HPP [High Performance Powertrains] has worked incredibly hard. I have no doubt that we will get the performance we need to be competitive this year.”
