Lando Norris says McLaren’s impressive pace throughout Friday practice for Formula 1’s French Grand Prix was “a bit of a surprise”.

The Briton ended up an encouraging fifth in the FP2 timesheets and just 0.945s off the pace of session-leader Valtteri Bottas. Despite having both cars inside the top 10, Norris is wary of reading too much into Friday’s times ahead of qualifying.

“Comparing to Canada, much better for me,” Norris said.

“As a team we still did a good job with the pace being very promising. But we said that as well in Canada and it didn’t turn out too well on Saturday.

“So it has been a good day, the speed looked pretty good. But the car is not quite there yet in terms of what we can achieve.

“So put everything together tomorrow and hopefully everybody stays behind us.

“It is a bit of surprise; the team and I didn’t think the track would suit as much as Canada,” he added.



“It is just Friday - we were quick in Canada on a Friday. But I’m sure that the other teams are going to improve, so we have to improve the same amount.”

Teammate Carlos Sainz capped off a strong day for McLaren by splitting the Red Bull duo in seventh place, half a second behind Norris.

“You know it has been a good day when you are not happy with the car and suffering out there with different issues, and you are still P8,” the Spaniard concluded.

“So that gives good confidence for Saturday. We still need to change quite a lot of things because we were running a lot of experimental parts, changing floors, changing a lot of stuff on the car to see where the performance is.

“Hopefully tomorrow we can put together all the good pieces and have a better day. I don’t understand yet. We need to do some analyse.

“Today we were strong, but I will see that this track suits our car whenever we qualify P6 or P7. Until then, after Friday it is very difficult to tell.”