Lando Norris: “I’m happy with the progress that we’ve made”

It was a positive Friday for the McLaren F1 Team at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, with Lando Norris ending an encouraging fourth fastest in the second free practice session.

The British racer was only sixteenth in the opening session but found significantly more pace in the second hour of running, and he was only beaten by Scuderia Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz Jr. and Charles Leclerc and Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen.

Although not yet completely happy, Norris felt the team made progress throughout the day in Italy, and he hopes they can come out on Saturday in similar fashion and find a little bit extra to potentially move themselves even closer to the front of the field.

“Reasonable day. We made good progress through today, so I’m happy with the progress that we’ve made,” said Norris.  “We’re still not where we need to be.

“I don’t think we’re competitive enough yet to really fight confidently for, say, Q3 at the minute. We’ll keep working very hard. I think we’ve understood some things better today, after learning from the past few weeks, but like I said, still not quite where we need to be.

“So, a few adjustments tonight and a bit of homework and set-up tweaks and hopefully we can take a small step forward, and that gives us confidence to be in a good position tomorrow.”

“I think my afternoon was average” – Daniel Ricciardo

Team-mate Daniel Ricciardo ended the day with the eleventh fastest time overall, and he feels the set-up Norris had in the other car looked more promising than the one he trialled.

Ricciardo had started the day with the tenth fastest time in the first session, but he expects to revert to a different set-up on his MCL36 when it comes to Saturday’s running after calling his afternoon’s running as ‘average’.

“This track is so unique that you come with such a different set-up, so you don’t know what to expect,” said Ricciardo.

“I think the morning went relatively well. We made a few changes for the afternoon and across cars we tried a few different things. Lando’s afternoon looked really good, so that’s encouraging, so we will try to learn some things from that set-up.

“I think my afternoon was average – but I’m encouraged by his pace and looking forward to tomorrow.”

Daniel Ricciardo is confident the pace will come this weekend in Italy – Credit: McLaren F1 Team