Lando Norris admitted on Thursday that McLaren’s performance during the practice sessions for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was "pretty pants" and that he does not expect the team to fight for pole position. In the second practice session, Norris was a full 1.5 seconds slower than the session leader, George Russell, and the tight, 90-degree corners of the Baku street circuit appeared to expose the shortcomings of the current McLaren package. The team arrived in Baku with a substantial upgrade bundle that included brand‑new sidepods, a revised engine cover, an updated diffuser and a freshly designed floor edge. Despite the scale of the work, the upgrades have not translated into an immediate step forward on the track.
"We are miles off," Norris said. "We are up there relative and in the position we expect to be in but we are 1.5 seconds off the pace. Pretty pants." He added that he is 106 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli with nine races remaining in the season.
When asked whether McLaren could close the gap to Mercedes, Norris was cautiously optimistic but honest about the difficulty. "I hope so. I have no idea. We will see what work we can do tonight.
The car doesn't feel that bad, so it's a little knife in the heart when you see how far off you are. I just care about the pace and we are not very fast.
I drive whatever car I get given. I just want it to be quick and it's not very quick at the moment," he explained. During the second practice, Norris aborted a fast lap that, had it been completed, would likely have placed him within a second of Russell’s best time. Russell, who topped both practice sessions, described his own car as competitive over a single lap and suggested that the gaps to rivals would tighten in qualifying.
McLaren’s chief technical officer, Rob Marshall, cautioned that it is still early days for the eight new components on the car. "We had a lot of new bits on the car – a lot of learning. You put your package on and you need to learn how to dial it in and I don't think we are there yet," Marshall said. He added that the aerodynamic maps appear promising, but the team still needs to extract the full performance from the package.
Qualifying is scheduled for Friday at 13:00 local time, with the race itself set for Saturday at noon. The event will be broadcast live on Sky Sports F1, and a reminder was included that Sunday is a national day of remembrance in Azerbaijan, meaning no racing will take place that day. Although overtaking is possible on the Baku street circuit, starting position remains crucial because the track’s narrow sections and tight corners can make passing difficult. Mercedes driver George Russell noted that his team still has "plenty of work" to do, even though they felt the car was competitive over a single lap and their race pace seemed closely matched with McLaren and Red Bull.
Championship leader Kimi Antonelli suffered a hydraulic leak in the first practice session, which forced Mercedes to replace his engine before the second session. The repair cost Antonelli roughly an hour of track time, yet he still managed to finish second in the second practice, just half a second behind his teammate. "We tried to do the maximum with what we had.
We lost quite a few laps in FP1 and missing half of FP2 is never ideal, especially on a street circuit," Antonelli said. He described his recovery as "good" and expressed optimism for the upcoming qualifying.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was the closest challenger to Mercedes in the practice sessions, but even he was more than eight-tenths of a second slower than the leading times, despite Red Bull also bringing a new upgrade package to Baku. Isack Hadjar returned to the Red Bull car for the first time since July after missing three race weekends due to a wrist injury sustained during a summer break. Although he encountered an engine issue in the first practice that limited his running, Hadjar said he was "pretty happy" with what he could achieve.
"It feels good. I had a good feeling.
Not many laps unfortunately but this will come. I'm not really worried too much about the pace," he said, noting that the new package retained the same characteristics as before but felt better than when he left the car in Budapest. Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton both featured in the top five of each practice session. Hamilton, a seven‑time world champion, felt Ferrari were struggling with tyre performance and straight‑line speed.
"I felt generally good in the car. The track is awesome to drive. FP1 I felt very strong and I thought we were doing well but in FP2 the others took another step," Hamilton explained, adding that the tyre window was narrow and difficult to hit. He also highlighted that Ferrari’s straight‑line speed lagged behind Mercedes and that the team would need to work on that overnight.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur echoed the sentiment, saying the sessions were hard to interpret and that every performance parameter – fuel load, engine mapping and tyre behaviour – had a bigger impact than on a conventional circuit. He admitted the drivers were not entirely satisfied with the car’s balance and that the team had a lot of work to do before qualifying. The weekend schedule also includes a full slate of support races.
On Friday, the F2 Sprint will run at 05:10, followed by the third practice session for the Azerbaijan GP at 09:15 (the session itself starts at 09:30). The F2 Feature Race is slated for 11:10, with qualifying for the Grand Prix beginning at 12:30 and the qualifying session itself at 13:00. On Saturday, the F2 Feature Race 2 will start at 07:55, and the Grand Prix will kick off at 12:00, with post‑race analysis scheduled for the afternoon. All of these events will be streamed live on Sky Sports Main Event, and viewers are encouraged to use a Chrome browser for the best video player experience.
For those without a Sky subscription, the Sky Sports app offers a flexible, contract‑free streaming option via NOW, allowing fans to watch the action live and on‑demand.