Lando Norris has revealed McLaren was “worried” about its performance following Friday’s free practice session in Montreal.
The reigning world champion finished the chaotic session in sixth place, more than a second adrift of pace-setter Kimi Antonelli.
The deficit came despite McLaren introducing a significant upgrade package, leaving Norris concerned that the new parts had not delivered the expected gains.
However, the Briton enjoyed a much stronger sprint qualifying session, securing third on the grid behind the Mercedes duo and leaving him pleasantly surprised by the turnaround.
“It’s a very good actually, a good surprise,” Norris said.
“After this morning, we were a little bit worried about how far off we were, more just the lack of confidence in the car.
“But we made some tweaks, we changed some things and seemed to make a good improvement.
“So happy with third. It wasn’t the best lap, I could have got more out of it.
“But when I saw the gap to the guys ahead, not that much. A positive turnaround, I’m proud of the team that we’ve managed to do such a good turnaround.”
Norris: McLaren need ‘more time’ to review some upgrades
Norris has revealed he will not run all of McLaren’s upgraded parts for the remainder of the race weekend.
However, he expects the components to be reintroduced to the car in the future once the team has a better understanding of their performance.
“Some things are maybe a bit more questionable, and we probably need just more time to review things and look back, especially because it’s such a weird track,” he said.
“It’s so low grip, you’re bouncing off kerbs and stuff, so you’re not getting kind of a true representation of everything, and it’s hard to back it up with what we have in the wind tunnel.
“We need a bit more time with some bits, and I will probably reintroduce some of them next weekend, or in Barcelona.
“But at the same time, the rest of the car was clearly working well, and I felt confident in Q3, especially on the soft, which would be the first time this weekend that I felt that confidence.
“A good step forward and we’ll see what we can improve going into tomorrow.”
