Helped by the arrival of a tweaked floor and wing changes as part of ongoing revisions to the MCL60, Norris banked the team’s best qualifying result of the year with seventh in Baku.
His time of 1m41.281s left him behind only the Ferraris, Red Bulls, Mercedes and the sixth-placed Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso, who lapped a narrow 0.03 seconds ahead of the Briton.
But Norris reckoned McLaren had not executed its one-lap strategy perfectly to cost a top-four start for the GP, while he lamented scrubbing an extra set of Pirelli tyres ahead of the standalone Saturday sprint day.
Speaking to Sky, Norris said: “Definitely before today, 100%, we would have taken [seventh].
“It's a great result. The sequence of the upgrades working well, the car was working well on this circuit at the same time. I feel like I did a better job of my driving and things.
“I should have been a lot better really. I think we should have been P4 today. A bit disappointed, honestly.
“We as a team didn't do the best job with making the correct decisions of what to do. But apart from that, things are still positive.
"But we just put ourselves in the middle of nowhere for having a P7 today and not be able to do the runs tomorrow with the new tyres. So, mixed minds.
“Many positive things though if you look at it from that side. The team's done a great job getting the parts here and allowing them to work straightaway.
“We had good confidence that we could put them on and things run cleanly and that's what happened.”
Source: Autosport