Lando Norris suffering 'knife in the heart' over McLaren Baku reality

Lando Norris says seeing how far McLaren is off the pace compared to Mercedes in Azerbaijan is like "a little knife in the heart."

The MCL40 has received upgrades in Baku, but Norris, the lead McLaren in FP2, was 1.484s slower than George Russell's un-upgraded Mercedes.

The Baku City Circuit was not expected to favour McLaren, with its slow-speed corners exposing a long-held weakness in the chassis, whilst the longest straight on the calendar means the draggy nature of the machine is being shown. 

Furthermore, McLaren had a tricky day with the new upgrades, especially in FP1, where both Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri lost time whilst checks were made throughout the session.

Whilst he felt that the car was "not that bad", Norris spoke of the "pretty pants" feeling he had experienced.

"We're miles off, I mean we're up there, and in a position we expect to be in, but like 1.5s off the pace is pretty pants," Norris explained.

"We'll see what work we can do [overnight], and the car doesn't feel that bad; it is just a little knife in the heart when you see how far off you are.

"I don't really care how confident I am in the car; I just care about the pace, and we're not very fast, so I don't care.

"I drive whatever car I am given, and I just want it to be quick, and it's not very quick at the moment, but we will see what we can change."

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Norris reflects on tough McLaren day

Further reflecting on the tough day, Norris explained how the track layout was not helping the MCL40. 

"It was a tricky start after losing some laps in FP1, which wasn’t ideal, but the team in the garage did a solid job to get the cars ready for FP2, and that’s a positive we’ll carry forward," he said.

"Overall, the car actually feels pretty good to drive, but on a slow-speed track with a long straight, we’re losing out and being off the pace is a tough start. 

"We’ll now dig into the data overnight and see what we can change for [Friday's] sessions, I hope we can close some of the gap. 

"We’ll keep our heads down and try to maximise what we have for the remainder of the weekend."