Lando Norris was happy with his final day of testing in the McLaren F1 Team’s MCL35 at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya ahead of the 2020 FIA Formula 1 World Championship.
The Brit completed a total of 113 laps, adding up to 526 kilometres of running throughout the course of the day to finish fifth fastest, 0.732 seconds off of Sebastian Vettel’s fastest time of the day.
“I’m happy with the day,” said Norris. “We did a lot of laps, a lot of short runs and almost a full race run. We gained a good understanding of the car, both alone on track and following other cars – a bit of a mix really, which is usual at testing.
“It was a decent way to end the pre-season for me, giving us a good understanding of the areas to work on as we prepare for Australia.”
Norris heads in to his second year of Formula 1 this season after ending his rookie campaign in eleventh place with 49 points. The Brit will be hoping to build on his performance from last year that saw him finish in the top ten a total of eleven times with a best finish of sixth place in Bahrain and Austria.
McLaren F1 Team Technical Director James Key explained the day 5 programme as the team brought further changes to the car as they look to squeeze the best out of the shortened testing period for 2020.
“A full day today with Lando and a different approach compared to the other days of testing,” he explained.
“We introduced and tested some further developments today, but beyond that we began to explore the performance of the car and complete some set-up work with Lando before the start of the season.
“That all worked as planned and gave us some interesting and important information. We look forward to doing the same with Carlos tomorrow.
“This afternoon we did some longer runs which gave us some more information on the car at race fuel levels, which was good practice for Lando on his last day before we hit Melbourne.”
