Lando Norris admits he did not enjoy driving the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship cars with the McLaren F1 Team driver admitting they were far less comfortable than their predecessors.
2022 saw a massive overhaul of the aerodynamic regulations within Formula 1, with designs changing to try and bring the field closer together and enable drivers to be able to run closely to the car in front without going through too much turbulence.
But Norris, who took the only podium finish in 2022 not earned by drivers from Oracle Red Bull Racing, Scuderia Ferrari or the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team when he took third place in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, dislikes the feeling of the new cars, and believes there is a bigger challenge to set them up than there had been in 2021.
“I hate driving the cars compared to last year,” Norris is quoted as saying by RacingNews365.com. “They’re a different challenge.
“I wouldn’t say they’re as enjoyable as previous years’ cars, just in terms of how comfortable they are and how much you can play around with hitting the kerbs and lines and stuff like that. You’re a bit more limited now.
“Even with set-up, you’re a bit more limited. Generally, for us, it’s just [a case of] go as low as you can and as stiff as you can, and then you go a bit softer if it’s too stiff.
“That’s basically how it goes every single weekend whereas, in previous years, there was always a lot more to adjust and to try, and you always ended up with different weekends with different solutions.
“This year, not so much. There’s less playing around with actual car set-up, in a way. There [are] just bigger challenges of trying to achieve that one good set-up.”
Norris is unsure to whether the rules will become easier, and he says big changes may need to be made to make driving as enjoyable as before.
“I don’t know, unless there’s big changes,” Norris said. “I don’t know what changes they have in place.
“If anything, it’s only ever going to get worse because, the more downforce you put on the car, the worse it’s going to get. I think, I don’t know, but I expect the more [the] cars change and improve, the more downforce you have, the worse [the] following [on track] is going to be.
“I think that’s kind of how it works, anyway, unless there’s further implements and changes that the FIA bring in to stop certain changes, which caused a lot of the dirty air.”