Lando Norris said he has known for three months that his McLaren team was likely to endure a difficult start to the new Formula 1 season.
Pre-season testing saw some alarm bells ring with the performance of the MCL60 being closely scrutinised. It wasn't long before chief executive Zak Brown was admitting that development targets for the new car had been missed.
The Bahrain Grand Prix was supposed to give the team a first opportunity to properly assess the car's race pace. But that never happened, as Oscar Piastri retired early on with an electrical fault and Norris suffered a pneumatic problem throughout the race which forced him to pit no fewer than six times.
A day earlier, Piastri had qualified 19th on the grid while Norris could manage only 11th. And the Brit was slightly fortunate to even make it through to Q2, having set the exact same time as Logan Sargeant and only progressed because he had done it shortly before the Williams racer.
For a team which has threatened to push for regular podiums in recent years to suddenly have one of the least competitive cars on the grid comes as a bit of a surprise. But Norris told reporters that he knew "three months ago" that the start of the campaign was likely to be tough for his team.
A quick fix is unlikely, but Norris remains optimistic considering there are still 22 races to come in this long season. He said: "I think it’s a mixture of two things – one is the general balance and two is overall downforce.
"Overall downforce kind of fixes, let's say 90% of the problems. But to take that final step, there are other things on top of it. I don't know the specifics of numbers and so on and where we are going to be. I think that's the point. But we have similar limitations to what we had last year."
Asked if the team's ambitions for the season have been affected, he added: "We want to end as a top four team. I think that will give us a big boost of confidence going into '24 when we will have part of the car set up in the new wind tunnel."
