McLaren's Lando Norris claims P13 during qualifying for 2022 Bahrain GP 'is the best' he could have done today

Lando Norris has claimed that qualifying for the 2022 season opener in Bahrain at P13 was the best that McLaren could have hoped for.

The Briton initially struggled to progress out of Q1, before a stellar lap allowed him to escape elimination. He, however, couldn’t extract any more pace from the MCL36 to progress into the top-10. When asked if he was disappointed with his team’s performances during the post-qualifying media session, he said:

“I think even then we were better off than what we expected.”

Claiming that McLaren doesn’t expect to progress up the grid on Sunday, he said:

“We don’t know where we will be tomorrow; we could be better, or we could be worse. We expect to be near where we are, like similar pace from the car between qualifying and race. But different cars treat their tires differently, and of course we’ll do everything we can to try and be better than them, but it’s not easy. We’ll see what we can do.”

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Bahrain issues blindsided McLaren going into first race

At the highs of 2021, McLaren regularly competed against Ferrari, vying for the best-of-the-rest position behind only Red Bull and Mercedes. Consequently, the Woking-based team was expected to be at the front of the grid in 2022.

With a stellar driver line-up and the potential for a mixed-up grid due to the new regulations, McLaren was hoping to return to its race-winning glory days of the past. At pre-season testing in Barcelona, the team seemed to be the most sorted of the bunch, having not experienced any porpoising issues that plagued others.

As soon as they arrived in Bahrain for the second test, however, front brake overheating issues hampered their ability to make any meaningful running. Throughout testing, they spent much of their time getting the car to run reliably, while others were busy gathering valuable data and making significant progress.

Furthermore, Daniel Ricciardo’s positive COVID test complicated things, leaving Lando Norris to take sole responsibility for the team in Bahrain. As a result, the team recorded the lowest number of laps on the grid, even as Norris did more laps than most other drivers.

According to the team’s technical director James Key, the team was blindsided by the brake issues and was surprised by their impact. Speaking to the-race ahead of the Bahrain GP, he said:

“I’ve got to say we’re obviously surprised. It’s been a tough weekend for us, we definitely came in on the back foot having not tested properly at all last week because of these brake issues that have crept up on us.”

While the team has brought an interim fix to the brake cooling issues, it has cost them a lot of performance. Should they manage to find a more suitable solution, McLaren’s might live up to their expectations.