Norris confident McLaren not impacted by rear wing clampdown

Lando Norris says the FIA’s clampdown on rear wing flexibility at the Chinese Grand Prix will not impact McLaren, suggesting his team should have been exploiting the area more.

The FIA announced on Monday that it would be reducing the amount of flexibility it allows from rear wing elements via a more stringent test, with the gap between the two elements not allowed to exceed 0.5mm -- down from 2.0mm -- when a load of 75kg is applied. The test is designed to stop teams running bodywork that would open up a gap between the two elements -- described as a "mini-DRS -- at high speed, reducing drag.

McLaren was at the center of focus relating to its rear wing towards the end of last season, but Norris says the team doesn’t have to take any action as a result of the latest developments.

“No, we don't have to change anything,” Norris said. “Ours is fine. In fact, ours was probably too good. We're probably not pushing the limits enough, honestly.

“If this technical directive was applied for last weekend, we'd also be fine, so it's not directed at us, it seems. It's directed at other teams. Which probably means we need to push it a little bit more.”

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Norris did not name any other teams that he felt could be impacted by the FIA’s additional scrutiny, but he says he is expecting Ferrari to soon be a more serious challenger to McLaren than it was in Australia.

“I'm hoping we can do better and I'm hoping it can be a bit easier. I think we had a great race [in Melbourne]. Our gap to our competitors halfway through the race was 15 seconds or something. So, more lucky that there were some safety cars that kind of brought them back into the race. But we're hopeful.

“It's another race, a different weekend, so I wouldn't say we're confident that things are going to be exactly like they were. And I expect, again, a bit more competition from Ferrari this weekend. We saw how quick Red Bull have been, so clearly they're not out of it.

“They're just as fast. I think when things are perfect, like they were in qualifying, we have an advantage, but they're certainly not far behind.

“Definitely the gap in qualifying I was a bit surprised by. Our goal was to be quickest and we expected to kind of be there, but we expected Ferrari to be a good chunk quicker than they were. I think they ended up, what, seven, eight tenths off? They're not seven, eight tenths off by any means.

“There's not been one session, FP1, FP2, FP3, that even looks that far off. All of their race runs were a lot closer to us than everyone else. In fact, I think that Ferrari's race pace on the Friday was even better than ours almost.

“So we were a little bit surprised. I'm sure they seemed a bit shocked as well as to why they were so far off. I don't know why, but it just shows how difficult it is. It's so easy for it to be going well and so easy for it to just kind of turn upside down and not.”