Lando Norris: McLaren's "fresh start" key to their success
F1 News
McLaren performed consistently well in 2019 and Lando Norris believes that a "fresh start" was key to their success. The young Brit did well in his debut Formula 1 season and thinks that the team has changed a lot since the failure of 2018.
"I think one of the biggest things that changed was having a fresh start," Norris said to GPToday.net. "Two new drivers, new people within the team, new management with Andreas [Seidl] coming in.
"[There were] a lot of changes within the team which refreshed everything but at the same time, because the last years have been so bad, I don't think coming into this year, for a good reason we didn't overhype things as in previous years."
Norris looked back on the hype that surrounded the team and how stepping away from that was key to their results.
"Coming to Abu Dhabi [in 2018], everyone was excited about how McLaren was going to do next year because as a team we [before] said too many things which were making people overly confident," Norris said.
"We didn't do that, which was a good thing. People worked hard over the winter and with that, we started testing.
"We weren't super happy with how testing went, but as the race weekends went on, the environment and everything started to come together more and more.
"So there's been a lot of key things. But two new drivers, new management, people looking out for everyone... putting everything together has made it more enjoyable for the drivers, but also more enjoyable for the team."
McLaren have a healthy team and it is clear to see everyone enjoys working there. They will hope to continue performing and get more podiums in 2020.