McLaren ‘already behind’ as Verstappen sets practice pace

After Friday’s practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix, McLaren were “already a little behind,” according to Lando Norris.

After a successful run of races for the Dutchman, Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri are under pressure from Max Verstappen, who is four-time champion, at Friday practice at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Verstappen set the tone, leading Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc by 0.153 seconds, 40 points clear of championship leader Piastri after a three-win stretch and a second place overall.

Piastri, who was 14 points ahead of the Briton, was in 12th place, while Norris was fourth fastest.

While handing his car over to a rookie, Norris, one of nine drivers, said, “We’re in a reasonable place, for sure.

I was surprised by how quickly I was up to speed. The limit is just a little bit slow for us because I found it quickly but quite quickly.

“Not that it was a bad day, but everyone catches up on Saturday after we’re good on Friday,” he said.

We have definitely some work to do tonight because we are already a little bit behind. Similar to the last few weeks, the balance is slightly off. Single-lap stuff is currently causing us some trouble.

Verstappen was disappointed with his day, saying he was struggling for pace on the race-simulation runs later in the session despite being the quickest overall.

Verstappen, who has a new floor installed on his Red Bull as the team chases every last bit of performance, said, “The short run on the soft (tyre) we managed to do a good lap. The rest was awful, as was everything else.

The short run was not great on the medium tire, and the long run, which appeared to be a major issue, was it. The race is very concerned about that.

The balance was not even off. Simply put, there was no grip. That is more important. We were nowhere when the tires started to go into a sustainable run, so that’s a difficult one to resolve. We’ll see.

Verstappen retorted, “Yes, but you are not going to win the race like that,” when it was pointed out that his consolation was that qualifying should be done at single-lap.

Despite Norris’ concerns about McLaren’s one-lap speed, the spectators were impressed by his long run.

Comparisons were challenging because Leclerc’s engineer Bryan Bozzi claimed over team radio that Norris looked “very fast” on the long run, which McLaren did on the soft tyre, rather than the medium used by the other front-runners.

And fourth-placed Mercedes driver George Russell said: “Lando looked very quick on his long run, which has obviously been the theme. However, qualification is crucial. The top eight cars will compete for position.

Piastri explained his 12th place overall position by stating that his “lap on the soft on low fuel was pretty average, so I’m not surprised by the lap time,” which has been a difficult run of races since winning in Zandvoort at the end of August.

But when asked if McLaren could compete with Red Bull in Mexico, he responded, “Yes, I think so. Although it will be tight, we will have a good vehicle underneath us, in my opinion.

Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari paced second fastest, ahead of Russell, Yuki Tsunoda, and Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin. The top 10 were made up of Lance Stroll and Williams driver Carlos Sainz.

No significant incidents occurred, but Williams driver Alex Albon came in 19th overall after crashing into the wall at the end of the final corner of his qualifying simulation lap to finish.

Arvid Lindblad, a rookie driver for Red Bull, led the first session by 0.093 seconds and finished two places ahead of Tsunoda.