McLaren F1 Team‘s new upgrades for the French Grand Prix appear to be working well at the Circuit Paul Ricard, with both Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo ending the day in the top ten.
Norris came out on top between the two McLaren drivers, with the British driver ending the opening day in sixth-place. Norris performed well across both sessions, where he brought his day to a close almost 1.1 seconds behind early-pacesetter and former team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr.
The Brit was “reasonably” happy with how the first day went, but believes he still needs to “adapt” slightly to make the most of the new parts.
“A reasonable day. It’s been a day of trying the new parts on the car and trying to understand them and figure them out for tomorrow. I think we’ve done that. The pace of the car and the handling’s in a reasonable position – but also a bit different between the old package and the new package. There’s still some adapting to do with my driving and so on, so a bit more potential to move forward tomorrow. We’ll have a look this evening, figure it out and see what we can improve on for Saturday.”
“There’s still quite a lot to come” – Daniel Ricciardo
On the other side of the McLaren garage, Ricciardo also performed well on the opening day. It was one of the Australian’s better opening days of the season, after the Honey Badger ended Friday in ninth-place.
Ricciardo was 1.457 seconds behind Sainz, and just over three-tenths behind his team-mate. The Aussie thinks it’s “obviously not bad” for both drivers to end the first day in the top ten; however, he does believe there is “still quite a lot to come” from the car across the remainder of the weekend.
“We were trying quite a bit today with some updates to the car and I’d say we are still trying to figure out the best way to set the car up with it, so still learning. I think looking at the positions, both cars in the top 10 is obviously not too bad – but I do think there’s still quite a lot to come from that.
“I think we’ve still certainly got some more in it. We’ll just try to fine-tune it and understand a bit more tonight. I think we feel ok about today but there’s quite a bit more to get out of it so we will get out there tomorrow and have a bit more fun.”
