When Lando Norris started the 2023 Formula 1 season unable to reach Q3 or score points, he did not expect McLaren would become a consistent podium threat by the end of it.
Although he ended the year sixth in the championship standings, Norris finished second to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in five grands prix: Nobody else was as frequent a rival to this year’s dominant champion.
Thoughts of such results were far from his mind early in the year as he contemplated what looked likely to be a season far from the pace.
“The beginning was tough because I didn’t know… I thought it was going to be for the whole year, in a way,” Norris admitted. “We didn’t know how much we were going to improve, especially at the very beginning.
“Of course we said ‘we’ll be a bit patient and we know we’ve got some decent things coming.’ But in the past few years, when we’ve had decent things come, they’ve not always stood up to be that much of an improvement. This year was quite the opposite and turned out to be almost a bigger improvement than we were expecting.
“But it was tough. You never want to start the season thinking ‘wow, I’ve got 23 races to go and I can’t even get out of Q1’. It’s tough knowing that and thinking that so early on in the season. It just makes you think ‘damn, it’s going to be a hell of a long, long year’.”
Being so far off the pace at the beginning of the season meant the team made sure it maximised the potential of its car, which stood them in good stead after their breakthrough with the MCL60, said Norris.
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“I think what set us up very well is that it made everyone work very hard to try and achieve everything you could with a bad car. Which then set us up very nicely for when we eventually had a good car.
“I think we’ve been one of the best teams – maybe not so much after Vegas, but apart from that – of maximising points every weekend and reliability. Everything else on top of just having a quick car, I think we’ve been very good at.
“Being in a bad position at the start of the year always helps this a little bit, because you realise sometimes when you’re quick, a lot of things are easy and they come easily and you kind of forget sometimes the smaller things. When you’re struggling, every little tiny, small thing is almost more important. And therefore you utilise them more.
“So when you…
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