At last week’s Bahrain Grand Prix, Lando Norris started the race in 7th place and finished in 6th, in Jeddah he will start behind team-mate Oscar Piastri, who took 5th place in qualifying.
In pre-season practice, the MCL38 proved to be a competitive car. Despite the fact that the conditions at the Bahrain International Circuit didn’t suit the car at best, both drivers managed to score points for the team, and it seem like that will be the case for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix as well.
After qualifying, the young Briton was all smiles and recalled that today’s result was better than last year’s, as the Woking team had had a very poor first half of the season in 2023: “Yeah, good session, better than last year”.
Norris said he was happy with the results and mentioned that due to tyre choices, they were at a bit of a disadvantage, but the 24-year-old stressed that it was an outstanding team effort: “I’m happy I think we got the most out of today it was a quite a big step on the last set of tyres because we chose the 4,2, 1 rather a little bit of a disadvantage the whole session but the one that we chose to have in a way and I think we maximized it otherwise, a good effort as a team”.
The Bristol native was asked about race pace and commented that he expects to be on a “similar pace” to qualifying, with both he and his Australian teammate giving McLaren double points for the second time in the season.
2024 looks set to be a good year for the Andrea Stella-led team, with both drivers and car looking in good shape.
