McLaren dominant despite changing car over rivals’ “complaints”

Lando Norris said McLaren’s performance in the Singapore Grand Prix was especially impressive in the wake of the controversy over their ‘mini DRS’ rear wing.

McLaren agreed to change the design of their rear wing after rivals pointed out it flexed at speed under peak loads during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend, where they won.

Norris won yesterday’s race in Singapore emphatically, leading by almost half a minute at one stage. He said their dominant performance without the previous wing was especially impressive.

“We’ve not changed anything on the car from here to last weekend or the weekend before,” he said. “We’ve even had to make tweaks to some of our wings and things that people have complained about. But we’ve still had a great weekend and probably one of our most dominant weekends here.”

He said the ‘mini DRS’ hadn’t been key to McLaren’s performance. “I don’t think that’s made the difference, honestly. It was just that the car’s been mega for a good amount of time.

“I’ve not been able to come out on top for quite a few of them when I felt like I had the pace and I had the ability to do. Some of that is down to my own fault and not executing things well enough.

“So I’ve paid the price for not doing a good enough job at times. But when I lead after turn one and things are a bit more straightforward then we can have a day like today.”

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He made two noticeable errors during yesterday’s race, touching barriers at turns 10 and 14, but he said the contact did not appear to affect the car.

“The team said that there was something with the front wing maybe being a little bit off. I hit the front wing against the barrier, so it might have tweaked it a touch, but I don’t think probably much to change it.

“But it’s hard to know. On these cars, as soon as you tweak something a tiny bit, it can have quite a big impact, but nothing that I was probably feeling.”

He suspects one mistake occured because he began to encounter the turbulent air from cars he was catching to lap.

“You have a little bit less grip, a little bit less downforce. The tyres are going away a little bit. It just caught me out.

“So it wasn’t like a lack of concentration or anything. It was just a bit of a surprise to me.”