Lando Norris was blunt after Thursday's practice sessions in Baku, describing McLaren's speed as "pretty pants" and making it clear he does not expect the team to fight for pole position this weekend. In the second free‑practice session the British driver was roughly 1.5 seconds off the pace of the session leader, George Russell, a gap that highlighted how the tight, 90‑degree corners of the Azerbaijan street circuit seem to expose a fundamental weakness in the current McLaren package.
The team arrived in Baku with a substantial upgrade bundle that includes completely new side‑pods, a redesigned engine cover, a revised diffuser and fresh floor edges. Despite the magnitude of the work, the upgrades have not translated into an immediate performance boost.
"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 23‑year‑old, who sits 106 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli with nine races remaining, admitted the car does not feel terrible, which makes the time deficit feel like a "knife in the heart." When asked whether McLaren could close the gap to Mercedes, Norris replied that he hopes they can, but he has no concrete answer. "We will see what work we can do tonight," he added, emphasizing that his primary concern is extracting more speed.
"I just want the car to be quick and it's not very quick at the moment." During the second practice session Norris aborted a lap that, according to his team, would have put him within a second of Russell's best time. Russell, who topped both practice sessions, later noted that overtaking is still possible in Baku but that track position remains crucial on the narrow, twisty street layout.
He also praised his own car, saying it felt competitive over a single lap and that race pace was closely matched with McLaren and Red Bull, though he expects the gaps to tighten further in qualifying. McLaren's chief technical officer Rob Marshall described the situation as "early days" for the eight new components on the car.
He explained that integrating a large number of new parts requires a learning curve: "You put your package on and you need to learn how to dial it in and I don't think we are there yet. The aero maps seem pretty happy. It's just a matter of dialing the performance in." The weekend schedule is packed. Qualifying is set for Friday at 13:00 local time, followed by the Grand Prix on Saturday at noon, with the race broadcast live on Sky Sports F1.
Sunday is a public holiday in Azerbaijan for Remembrance Day, so the event concludes on Saturday. Mercedes also faced challenges. Kimi Antonelli suffered a hydraulic leak in the first practice session and was forced to change his power unit before the second session, losing about an hour of track time.
Despite this setback, Antonelli still managed to finish second in the second practice, just half a second behind his teammate George Russell. He described the weekend as a "good recovery" and expressed optimism for the upcoming qualifying session. Red Bull's Max Verstappen, while still the fastest of the non‑Mercedes cars, remained over eight tenths of a second slower than the Mercedes duo at the end of the day, even after Red Bull introduced its own upgrades for Baku. Meanwhile, Isack Hadjar returned to the Red Bull cockpit after missing the previous three rounds due to a wrist injury sustained during the summer break.
Although he encountered an engine issue in the first practice, Hadjar said he was "pretty happy" with the limited running he got, noting that the new package feels better than it did in Budapest. Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton both featured in the top five of each practice session, but Hamilton warned that the team is still struggling with tyre performance and straight‑line speed.
He explained that the Baku tyres are extremely difficult to get into the optimal temperature window, causing a fine line between grip and slip. "When you do an extra lap, all of a sudden they switch up and you have tonnes more grip," Hamilton said, adding that Ferrari's straight‑line speed still lags behind Mercedes. Team principal Frederic Vasseur echoed the sentiment, saying the sessions were hard to read and that fuel and engine parameters had a larger impact than on a typical circuit. He promised a lot of work would be done overnight to find a better solution for qualifying.
The broader race weekend also includes 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 are streamed live on Sky Sports Main Event, and viewers are encouraged to use the Chrome browser for the most accessible video player experience. In summary, McLaren's extensive upgrade package has yet to deliver the expected performance boost in Baku, leaving Norris and the team with a substantial time deficit to the leading Mercedes cars.
While the team remains hopeful that further work and setup adjustments can narrow the gap, the reality on Thursday was a stark reminder that new parts alone do not guarantee immediate results. The upcoming qualifying session will be the first true test of whether the upgrades can be fully exploited, and the race on Saturday will reveal if McLaren can turn a "pretty pants" practice into a competitive performance on race day.