McLaren’s pre-season a “huge amount better” than in 2022

In brief

McLaren’s pre-season a “huge amount better” than 2022 – Norris

McLaren covered the least distance of any team in the pre-season test in Bahrain last week, but Norris believes the team is in better shape than they were before the start of the 2022 season, when they suffered major brake problems.

“It’s a huge amount better than this time last year,” Norris said. “Of course a bit more focus on making sure we came here on top of everything, which I think we pretty much are. There’s been a couple of little setbacks here and there, but for the most part, the team has done a better job. We’re definitely in a better place.

“There’s still many things, to be honest, which we’ve been struggling with over the last few days. I guess we’ve been exploring – we’ve been trying a lot of different things with set ups. The car looks fairly similar, but still, there’s quite a few different things on the car. Fundamentally the car handles in a reasonably similar way to last year, which is I guess good in many ways, but also it still is evident where we have to focus on.”

Pirelli could mix compounds at Silverstone – Isola

Pirelli motorsport director Mario Isola says the F1 tyre supplier could switch up its tyre compounds for the British Grand Prix later this season.

Pirelli have six compounds available for the 2023 season and have traditionally selected three compounds that are consecutive in their range. However, Isola says Pirelli may opt to mix up their compounds at high speed circuits like Silverstone.

“The older C1 – that is now called the C0 – was working well in Silverstone, Zandvoort, but not [in Bahrain] and not in Barcelona, for example,” Isola explained. “So the target was to develop a new C1 with more grip.

“So we have now the flexibility of having six compounds homologated also to pick different compounds and jumping a level. Silverstone could be C0, C2, C3 instead of C1, C2 and C3.”

Preparing for second year “much smoother” than rookie season – Zhou

Alfa Romeo driver Zhou Guanyu says preparing for his second season in Formula 1 feels considerably different to approaching his rookie season last year.

Zhou was the only rookie on the grid in 2022, making his debut with Alfa Romeo in Bahrain, where he finished in the points. He says returning as an…