F1 News: Lando Norris Drops Bomb - "We Have A Poor Car, Pretty Terrible"

Lando Norris secured a splendid P2 finish at the British Grand Prix, but this didn't stop him from delivering some bad news to fans. He candidly disclosed the McLaren MCL60's weakness in slower corners.

Silverstone, famed for its high-speed characteristics, complemented the MCL60's performance; however, recent upgrades notably boosted its pace.

At the iconic Grand Prix, Norris momentarily took the lead from Max Verstappen, in an impressive start. Later, he effectively resisted Lewis Hamilton's challenge, matching his best-ever Formula 1 result.

McLaren launched an extensive MCL60 makeover at the Austrian Grand Prix, which saw a plethora of new parts fitted to Norris's car. These significant upgrades led to an incredible boost in speed at the Red Bull Ring, leading to Norris rapidly ascending the pecking order.

Norris linked the car's exceptional performance more to the Silverstone track's nature than the car's actual prowess, particularly in slower corners.

When asked about the season-long performance of the car, Norris remarked to the media following the race:

“It’s definitely not been present in the car all season – Bahrain was quite the opposite.

“These tracks allow us to look after the tyres well. Like I said, we’re very, very competitive in high speed.

“We’re almost on par with what Red Bull could achieve and actually, I would say towards the medium speed like Turn 15 here, Stowe, I would say we’re close to being the best car on the grid.

“Super, super high speed like Turn 9 [Copse], maybe not quite so much, but that was in qualifying and then when we come to the race we definitely maintain our performance when others seem to take a bit of a hit.

“And in doing so we can actually look after the tyres pretty well, especially when there’s no thermal limitation within tyre like there was necessarily today.

The Belgian-British driver continued:

“But we do have a poor car – and I say poor, I would say pretty terrible in the slow-speed corners, extremely difficult to drive.

“I feel if we’re getting excited and I accept that, but we’re going to go to a couple of tracks coming up where I’m sure people are going to be saying ‘what have you done now? Like, how has it got so bad all of a sudden?’

“So, we’ve improved a lot of things: tyre degradation, there’s always little things you try and do with tyre cooling and blah, blah, blah, but nothing big from that side.

“It’s just this track’s allowed us to look after the tyres nicely, keep them in a good condition. Simple as that.

“So a lot of it is track-specific. I don’t want to get too excited, but good things have come from the upgrade but there’s still plenty of things which are miles away from, say, competing in certain places with a Mercedes and as a whole package competing even with a Red Bull, so a lot more work to be done from both of those areas.”