Lando Norris: “The feeling was a little different”

Exit the tandem Fernando Alonso – Stoffel Vandoorne at McLaren for 2019, and room for a hitch Lando Norris - Carlos Sainz to try to put Woking back in the right car, after a more than complicated 2018 for the MCL33, powered by the engine Renault.

Norris was able to start as a starter yesterday on the track of the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, on the first day of Pirelli 2019 tire testing. A new position which offers more open prospects for the young Briton.

« It was certainly different ...I think it wasn't more pressure, but it was more thinking, and knowing that a lot of these things were for my own good, which will really benefit me for next year, admits Norris.

Everything will help, it's a lot more for me: working with the team, the engineers, trying to base everything more around me than Fernando and Stoffel. So it was definitely a little different. I was more focused on trying to put together the best for myself, and not so much for others. »

The FIA ​​vice-champion F2 2018 believes in particular that he was able to work better on long stints, a parameter that he had not been able to fully understand during these last outings with McLaren. A line of work that led to others.

“There were still a lot of things to see, like longer relays, more starting procedures, feel the degradation of the tires, which I had never had. I did full days like this in Budapest, Barcelona. . But nowhere did I really feel tire degradation.

So that was probably the most important thing I wanted to do today, feel the degradation and feel the point where I would need to pit. »

Carlos Sainz took to the track this Wednesday, with the MCL33, for his first official outing with McLaren.