Lando Norris is the favorite for the Australian Grand Prix, at least based on what was seen in testing, but the British driver is keeping an eye on Ferrari.
During the Bahrain tests in February, McLaren found a different gear in race pace compared to its direct competitors, gaining the pre-season leadership. However, in just a few hours, the serious racing will begin, and the Australian weekend will provide an initial assessment of the real on-track performance and how much work the teams will need to do throughout the rest of the season.
The “favorite” label doesn’t sit well with Lando Norris, who, speaking to the press, introduced the Melbourne event in this way. Here are his words: “I’m happy and excited to start the season, but I don’t believe we are ahead of our main competitors. There’s been a lot of talk about it in the last few weeks, but I think we’re at a similar level to Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari. Also, not many things were seen during testing, and you’ll be surprised at how fast Ferrari will be this weekend.”
Norris then shifted the focus to the tests and how they can be misleading: “I know how much fuel and other parameters our competitors used in Bahrain, and that has a big impact on the lap times. It will be a tough weekend for us because we’ll be fighting with all of them, but we want to start on the right foot. They like to talk, but we’ll see what the track says. We had a good test in Bahrain and we’re in a good position, that’s for sure, but I don’t believe for a second that we’re faster than the others.”
Photo: X McLaren F1 Team
