Lando Norris highlights the huge DRS gap between McLaren and their rivals

Lando Norris’ McLaren MCL60 is so draggy at top speed the Briton says it actually “helps” the team when DRS is not available while racing rivals for position.

Following on from two point-less races to start this season, McLaren lined up on the Australian Grand Prix grid with Norris P12 and his team-mate Oscar Piastri 16th.

Keeping it clean through two restarts for Alex Albon and Kevin Magnussen’s crashes, the McLaren pairing survived the late-race chaos to finish sixth and eighth respectively with Norris happy to have beaten the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg.

Overtaken by Sergio Perez, Norris stuck to the Red Bull driver’s rear wing and tried to follow him through when he passed Hulkenberg.

The German, though, closed the door on the Briton to kick off a tussle that ran for a few laps, Norris eventually through with six to go as Hulkenberg ran wide and unable to fight back.

Calling it a “good” fight against the German, Norris admits it wasn’t easy as one of McLaren’s biggest weaknesses is the car’s top speed and that is only exacerbated when DRS is open as it makes an already draggy car even more so.

“I was able to race against them and actually overtake them, which was probably one of the biggest challenges we faced because our top speed is so bad,” he said as per Motorsport.com. “But I overtook Hulkenberg and had a good race with him. So it was sometimes positive.

“I think it helps us not to have DRS. We were shocked to see how bad we were with DRS and how draggy the car is when we open the DRS.

“We are catching up a few miles per hour but other cars are gaining ten to fifteen miles per hour. For us it’s a different story. Saturday is our big weakness at the moment. Especially if you have four DRS zones, that is not in our favour.”

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The Briton is confident that McLaren, set to bring a big upgrade to the next race in Baku, have a grasp on what has gone wrong with the MCL60 and can now work on improving the car.

“I think we understand and we are trying to work out how to make it better and more efficient,” he said. “It will be a while before we can improve that much.

“We are trying, but such a difficult Saturday makes our lives harder on Sunday. But when you have a day like Sunday, it just goes to show that hard work pays off.”

Norris didn’t state which rivals he was comparing McLaren’s DRS pace to with Red Bull’s drag reduction system said to be worth two tenths or three tenths of a second.

Speaking about it after Australia, Sky Sports’ Ted Kravitz said: “It is an advantage that other engineers in the pit lane estimate is worth between two tenths or three tenths of a second on that lap compared to another car with DRS. So this Red Bull super-duper DRS is worth an awful lot.

“Now when you consider that at some tracks Red Bull’s entire advantage is two tenths or three tenths that’s quite a handy thing to have.”

Mercedes’ Toto Wolff said Red Bull’s straight-line speed is “mind-boggling”.