Lando Norris was blunt after Thursday's practice sessions at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, describing McLaren's performance as "pretty pants" and admitting the team is not in the running for pole position. The British driver was a full 1.5 seconds slower than the session leader, George Russell, in the second practice session, a gap that highlighted how the slow‑speed, 90‑degree corners of the Baku street circuit do not suit the current McLaren package. McLaren arrived in Baku with a substantial upgrade bundle that includes brand‑new sidepods, a refreshed engine cover, a revised diffuser and updated floor edges.
Despite the magnitude of these changes, the upgrades have not translated into immediate on‑track speed. "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." The young driver, who sits 106 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli with nine races remaining, emphasized that the car does not feel terrible, which makes the large time deficit feel like a personal blow.
When asked whether McLaren could close the practice gap to Mercedes, Norris replied, "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." His comments underline the frustration of having a decent‑feeling chassis but lacking the outright speed needed to compete with the front‑running teams. Norris also aborted a lap in the second practice session that, according to team data, would likely have brought him within a second of Russell's best time.
Russell, who topped both practice sessions, remains confident that Mercedes can improve further, noting that the car felt competitive over a single lap and that race pace was closely matched with McLaren and Red Bull. He expects the gaps to tighten during 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 explained. He added that the aerodynamic maps appear satisfactory, but the team must still extract performance from the new hardware.
Qualifying is scheduled for Friday at 1 p.m., with the race itself set for Saturday at noon, both broadcast live on Sky Sports F1. The Baku circuit, while offering overtaking opportunities, still rewards strong qualifying positions because of its narrow, twisty street layout. Mercedes faced its own challenges. Championship leader Kimi Antonelli suffered a hydraulic leak in the first practice session and then had to replace his engine before the second session, costing him roughly an hour of track time.
Despite the setbacks, Antonelli managed to finish second in the second practice, just half a second behind his teammate George Russell, who leads the championship by 81 points. Antonelli said, "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. Overall, I feel like it was a good recovery.
I feel quite good in the car. A few things to work on but looking forward to tomorrow." Red Bull's Max Verstappen was the next fastest after Mercedes, but still more than eight-tenths of a second off the leading pace, even after his team introduced upgrades for the Baku weekend. Meanwhile, Isack Hadjar returned to the Red Bull cockpit after missing the previous three races due to a wrist injury sustained during the summer break. Hadjar, confirmed as Verstappen's teammate for the 2027 season, also suffered an engine issue in the first practice session, limiting his running time.
Nonetheless, he expressed optimism: "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. The feeling with this new package, we know the characteristics are the same with the car, but it feels nice – better than when I left it in Budapest." Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton both featured in the top five of each practice session, yet Hamilton lamented that the team is missing performance on the tyres and on the straights. "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 said, noting that the difficulty of getting the tyres into their optimal window has hampered Ferrari's grip. He added, "When you do an extra lap, all of a sudden they switch up and you have tonnes more grip, so that's a really fine line and really difficult to get working. But we try our best and some teams do it better than others.
We have to look into that. Then our straight‑line speed is not as good as Mercedes.
Whether we can close that deficit tomorrow, we will try to work on tonight. Otherwise, a fun day." Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur echoed the sentiment, saying the sessions were hard to interpret and that every performance parameter—fuel load, engine mapping—had a larger impact than on a typical circuit.
He concluded, "They [the drivers] were not very pleased with the balance so we have a lot to do tonight to find a good solution for tomorrow." The weekend schedule also includes a full slate of Formula 2 action, with a sprint race on Friday morning, a feature race later that day, and a second feature race on Saturday before the Grand Prix. All events will be streamed live on Sky Sports Main Event, and viewers can watch the Azerbaijan Grand Prix via the Sky Sports app or NOW, which offers a contract‑free, cancel‑anytime subscription. In summary, while McLaren's new aerodynamic and mechanical upgrades have shown promise in the wind tunnel, the real‑world performance in Baku remains a work in progress. Norris's candid assessment underscores the gap that still exists between the team and the front‑runners, and both McLaren and Ferrari will be looking to fine‑tune their packages ahead of qualifying, hoping to turn the promising single‑lap feel into tangible lap‑time gains for the race weekend.