McLaren slipped to a clear fourth in Friday running at Circuit of the Americas, with Lando Norris over a second off Charles Leclerc's FP2 pace and both papaya cars beaten by Racing Bulls. The gap tells only part of the story. Norris admits the MCL40 has underlying speed — the team set a purple sector before abandoning the lap — but extracting it lap after lap remains brutal. "The pace is not bad," he said. "It's just very difficult to achieve it." The car demands perfection through every corner, and perfection doesn't exist over 56 laps. Chief Technical Officer Rob Marshall struck a more optimistic tone, pointing to small aero upgrades around the front and rear corners that delivered measurable gains. Set-up tweaks overnight could close the gap, but McLaren faces a tightrope walk: find consistency without losing the raw speed buried in the MCL40's temperamental handling. If they don't, Sunday's championship math gets uglier.
Read the full story at formula1.com
