Lando Norris is unsure if McLaren's upgrades at this weekend's Sao Paulo Grand Prix will improve the "horrible" handling on the car. McLaren have not been in contention for victory in recent races, which Norris puts down to the team being outdeveloped by Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari. With the aim of getting back to the front, McLaren have a new front wing, rear wing and floor components for Brazil as they look to hold onto third in the Constructors' Championship.
"They [the upgrades] are just to add performance," said Norris last weekend in Mexico. "I don't think it will make it any easier [to drive]. Maybe there's a chance it makes it harder.
For this you always leave it to the experts. I give my feedback, I say what I want, what's difficult. "The engineers and aerodynamicists are the clever ones who turn my comments into lap time.
They are doing a good job and continuing to work hard." Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Norris won back-to-back races either side of the summer break in Budapest and Zandvoort, and should have won the Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid, if not for an unfortunate Virtual Safety Car. McLaren introduced upgrades to the car in Baku in September and have not been at the sharp end of the grid since that event. Norris, who is sixth in the F1 Drivers' Championship, says the car has "got better every time we brought upgrades" but is also unhappy with the MCL40's handling.
"The car has been horrible, difficult to drive the whole season. Just other teams have brought a lot more upgrades since and improved a lot more than what we have - nothing more than that," he said. "The team are still doing a good job, considering we were 1.5 to one second off at the beginning of the year.
The fact we won almost three races was a pretty sizeable achievement in itself, so we have had a pretty good year, if you want to look at it from that perspective. "Of course we hold ourselves to a very high level and want to win everything we can. We started a long way behind at the beginning of the season and did a good job to catch up, better than the majority of any other team on the grid.
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