Listen to this article McLaren endured a miserable start to the season in Bahrain as both Norris and teammate Daniel Ricciardo failed to score any points, having struggled to compete with majority of the midfield teams. Progress was made in Saudi Arabia one week later as Norris finished seventh, but the team made a big step forward in Australia as the British driver qualified fourth, only trailing Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and the Red Bull duo of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. Ricciardo also reached Q3 for the first time this season, taking seventh on the grid for his home grand prix. Norris felt there was a “split” in explaining the reason for McLaren’s step forward in Australia, but that most of it was down to the track layout suiting the car’s strengths. “There are some things which we have done well, and we still managed to extract naturally a bit more performance out of the car by understanding a few more things, and going a little bit more in a different direction with the set-up,” Norris said. “But at the same time, I think the majority of it is just the track. We’ve not brought anything that has changed much, and it’s not like we can do that much more with the set-up to make it go a lot quicker. “It’s more 70-30, or 80-20 in terms of 80 is just track and 20 is just hard work.” Ricciardo felt that while there were similarities between the track in …

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