“No One Was Slow..”: Frustrated Lando Norris Backtracks on His Optimism After McLaren’s Terrible Miami GP Showing

“Probably Miami will be something similar,” said Lando Norris, who had mixed feelings after the performance at the Azerbaijan track. Perhaps he was unaware of some of the difficulties waiting at the Miami Track for him and the papaya army. Right as you start to believe that McLaren is implementing those “small upgrades”, other problems start to afflict the team. Both Norris and Oscar Piastri finished the race day with P17 and P19, respectively, demonstrating that team’s drivers were unable to recover from the horrific performance at qualifying.

The papaya army continued to move at the slowest rate over the course of the weekend, with AlphaTauri only seven-hundredths of a second slower than the Woking-based team. The performance seems to have contradicted the British driver’s earlier assertion that “everyone back at the factory seems happier, more optimistic.”

Lando Norris, who has frequently demonstrated his support for the team and has defended the Woking-based squad in such challenging circumstances, seems to be finding this year’s campaign to be frustrating. Only two of the Belgian-British driver’s performances this season have been inside the points. As quoted by Motorsport-Total, frustrated Norris elaborated on the terrible weekend.

He said, “I have no idea. We don’t like the track, we don’t like the long corners, we don’t like the temperature, we don’t like the track surface. Those are different aspects. No one was slow this weekend. Maybe the AlphaTauris were the only other slow car, but everyone else was just fast. Alfa Romeo was mega fast, Haas was mega fast, and the Alpines were also significantly faster.” [Translated via Google]

Still indicating that it was the track that created such problems for the papaya army, the 23-year-old concluded, “But everyone else just made a huge leap and a lot of that I think is just the characteristics of the track.”

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McLaren’s issues seem to keep piling up. The team, which once ranked among the top competitors, is currently having difficulty cracking the top 10. Does the circumstance ring familiar to you? If so, let’s see what Lando Norris & Co has in store to tackle the problems from the root.

How do Lando Norris and Co. intend to solve the issues?

With an eye on raising their ranking, McLaren headed to Miami. However, in the end, it seems like the team has been pushed from the summit to the bottom. Nevertheless, this is not the first time McLaren has faced such a difficult situation. The team was suffering at P9 in the constructor’s standings earlier in 2018 when their former sporting director Gil de Ferran helped the team climb back to the top. He has now again added to the crew to address these enormous issues at the Woking-based garage.

While having a conversation with Motorsport.com, team boss Andrea Stella described the role of the two-time IndyCar champion. He said, “Gil is essentially a consultant, so non-operational, non-executive and that’s a role as a consultant to myself and to Piers [Thynne, the newly appointed McLaren Racing COO].”

While explaining the reason for the inclusion of the champion man, Stella added, “We thought that Gil, with us during this process, during this journey, would add horsepower from a leadership point of view.”

While talking about the potential Gil has, the boss said, “We have already proven in the past that this can be a very successful team having Gil on board, like in 2018, for instance, when we were able to turn a difficult situation at McLaren around [rising from ninth in the constructors’ championship in 2017 to third come de Ferran’s departure].”

WATCH THIS STORY: Will Lando Norris Switch Teams From the Miserable McLaren – What are his Options?

Do we assume with the inclusion of this genius, McLaren’s old grandeur is only a short distance away?