Like the rest of the teams, the Woking outfit only had Friday’s FP1 session during which to experiment before the set-up of the cars was locked in as parc ferme took effect for qualifying.
With an eye on the predicted wet conditions, McLaren went for a higher level of downforce than its rivals with both cars, a move that paid off in the sprint event when Oscar Piastri briefly led and finished second, with Norris sixth.
Nevertheless, the Englishman says that given more time the team would probably have taken downforce off the car.
“I think we're just not in the optimal range of downforce, I think, we went for a bit too high,” he said when asked by Autosport about his performance in the sprint. “And that's costing us probably close to six, seven, eight-tenths, just on the straights alone.
“Then you add clipping and the battery harvest, it can easily be up to almost a second in the straights during a race. But obviously, we get a decent amount back in the corners.
“So there's always this little to-and-fro, but maybe just not in the optimal place, which is I guess the penalty of just having FP1 and qualifying on Friday, that we just weren't able to set the car in the right window.”
Asked if he would have changed given more practice time he said: “I think if you had FP1, FP2, FP3, and we saw we're 20kph down on every straight - we're very good at medium and high speed, no matter what downforce we're on.
Source: Autosport