Norris teases “exciting” major upgrade for McLaren
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The Briton said the updates should help McLaren make their biggest step since their season-changing upgrade package which debuted at the Austrian Grand Prix in July. Has Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen Had Better Teammates?Video of Has Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen Had Better Teammates?McLaren endured a miserable start to 2023 but a series of updates introduced in Baku, Austria and Silverstone helped the British squad transform their competitiveness. Norris is hopeful McLaren’s latest developments will provide a similar boost in Singapore, with Oscar Piastri is set to benefit from the upgrade at next weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix. “Probably since Austria, it is the thing that we believe will kind of help us move forward the most since then,” he said. “Obviously, we’ve not run it on the track yet and so we don’t want to say too much until we’ve actually got it to work properly but it’s a good step.”The team have worked hard to get it on one of the cars here, and then we’ll have the rest in Japan too. So it is an exciting couple of weekends for us.”
Norris revealed the upgrade is largely focused on improving McLaren’s performance in slow-speed. “Sometimes we would put stuff on and it’s not really delivered to what we wanted or what it should have done,” he explained.Related ‘That’s his decision’ – Hamilton refuses to get involved in Massa’s lawsuit Hamilton demands action over Marko’s ‘completely unacceptable’ Perez remarks”But definitely up to Austria and how much we kind of progressed since then, it gives me more hope.”It’s also a bit more slower speed biased, which is a bit different to what we had in Austria. This is our first time we’ve been able to really try to target that a bit more.”He added: “I think it’s not going to help in exactly the places where, from a driving style point of view, I would probably want it, but it should just help with a little bit of overall loads, cornering speeds and just kind of consistency, tyre wear traction, things like that. “It is just performance enhancement, it’s not like something to make me feel better in the car.”
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