Norris bemoans ‘not ideal’ Bahrain F1 test after brake issues

McLaren completed the fewest amount of laps of any team in Bahrain as a recurring front brake issue reduced it to just 200 laps across the three days of running.

Besides its difficulties with the brakes, McLaren was without Daniel Ricciardo after he was ruled out of the first two days through illness before testing positive for COVID-19.

It was in stark contrast to the first test where McLaren left Barcelona as one of the teams to beat alongside Ferrari.

Reflecting on the second test in Bahrain, Norris conceded that the issues have been “less than ideal”.

“Less than ideal, it’s not been the smoothest of tests for us,” Norris said. “It’s been quite limited in Bahrain. I think Barcelona was a good one but here we’ve encountered quite a few more problems, which have limited the amount of laps we’ve done by quite a huge amount.

“We’re behind where we want to be, where we need to be, and where we can say we’re confident in any way going into the first race. It's not great but we’re getting through as much as we can. We’re definitely making progress, but definitely not in the position we want to be in.”

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has said it was in a “race against time” to bring upgraded parts ahead of the season-opener in Bahrain.

With new parts on the way, Norris says McLaren won’t know if the issue is completely fixed until the car takes to the track again this weekend.

“I think we are on top of it,” he added. “We know what the problems are, we know what we are suffering with, and so on. Coming up with the perfect fix is always the question of: ‘do we have that or not?’

“That’s what we’re unsure about until we get to next week and we put it all together. The team are working hard to understand the problems, obviously why they happened in the first place and why we encounter them, and then work on the fix for next week.

“But it’s not a simple fix; it’s quite a complicated area, it takes a lot of work, a lot of time to come up with these parts and so on and that’s why it’s the challenge to get it all here and in a good condition for next week.”