F1 News: Lando Norris Not Happy At Las Vegas - "Tricky Day At Tricky Circuit"

FP2 results may not have come as a surprise to McLaren.

McLaren driver Lando Norris was not too happy with the way things went about on the "tricky" first day of the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix, given the low downforce nature of the new street circuit that isn't necessarily a strength of their MCL60 F1 car. 

However, McLaren was quite wary as it stepped into the race weekend on a circuit that wasn't Papaya car-friendly, considering their cars have struggled on circuits of similar nature in the past. 

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Consequently, their failure to make it to the top ten in FP2 might not have come as a surprise after all. Not to forget a rather short FP1 that got cancelled as after Carlos Sainz's Ferrari hit a drain hole cover at speeds greater than 300 kph. But, the extended 90-minute FP2 that ended at 4 am might have offered the team a significant amount of data, as Norris seems confident of making progress tomorrow. 

Speaking to the media on his "tricky day" after finishing P11, he said:

“Today was a tricky day on a tricky circuit. The grip was poor and it’s easy to go through the tyres quite quickly, which is what we were doing.

“I think we’re a long way off where we’ve been the last few weekends, but probably where we expected. It’s similar to where we were in Monza and other low downforce circuits. It’s a struggle at the minute but I’m sure we can make progress into tomorrow.”

McLaren Team principal Andrea Stella revealed that the team faced cooling issues on the car before the drivers headed out on a smooth and slippery track. He added:

“It was a shame for teams and spectators alike that we lost the first session, but what happened with the manhole cover is something that we’ve seen before. The FIA reacted well to fix the problem and get us going for FP2.

“We had some issues with cooling the car, which means we lost a little bit of time at the start of the session. We got going relatively soon and got into understanding the behaviour of the car and the behaviour of the tyres. Conditions here are unique, with a unique temperature and unique tarmac characteristics. It’s very smooth and very slippery, which means the cars operate in a regime very different to what we’ve seen in recent races.

“We have work to do to extract more performance – but we gathered a lot of data that we will look at in preparation for FP3. There is performance we can unlock, and we remain positive about the rest of the weekend, but we need to find this improvement because we weren’t particularly competitive today. My thanks go to the entire team who have navigated working on a difficult schedule into the early hours of the morning. We now get some rest ahead of a busy few final days here in Las Vegas.”