Lando Norris feels one major area where McLaren needs to work on is making the car easier to drive. Ever since the driver joined the team in 2019, he has shown a level of progress every season.
While the team has also continued to improve and the last few races before the summer break were proof of that, the issue with the driveability remains according to Norris.
According to Lando Norris, the upgrade brought by McLaren has certainly made the car much quicker but the inherent issue with the car continues to be there. The car is still not easy to drive and it is still tough to execute a qualifying.
Regardless of the issues, the team seems to be on an upward trajectory and improved results from both drivers, including rookie Oscar Piastri is certainly a sign of progress.
Referring to where McLaren finds itself right now, Norris told media, including RacingNews365 in Hungary:
"Even with this upgrade, the performance of driving the car, the handling is not getting any better. It is still just as difficult to drive, difficult to execute Qualifying laps. In essence, it is slightly easier because [if you make a] mistake, we are higher up [in the order], especially over the last few weekends."
"In the higher-speed corners, it is harder to make a mistake because the car is performing better - and we have made the car quicker although I don't want to get ahead of ourselves as we've only had two weekends where we've been quick - but over the last five years, we have yet to make that step or improvement in slow speed handling and driveability," he added.
Lando Norris calls for improvement in driveability
Lando Norris felt that the improvements that McLaren has made to the car were impressive but if the team is looking for another breakthrough in performance then that would come from improving the driveability, something that has been an issue for few years now.
"For me, a bigger step would be improving how we drive the car, how easy it is to drive the car, rather than just adding 10 more points of load in the slow-speed corners," he said. "That is only going to get us so far up the order. I know comments from other people are the same in a way, but we are one of the slowest cars in slow-speed corners."
"It is just an area that has been bad for us for the last five years that we've not really tackled that well. At no point have we gone: 'Wow, the slow speed [performance] is strong, now let's work on the high speed.' It has always been good in the high-speed and poor in the slow-speed," Norris added.
Lando Norris had a strong ending to the first half of the season and will be hoping to pick up the momentum in the second half of the season as well.