McLaren closes the second Grand Prix of the season, in Jeddah, with six points in the pocket, conquered by 22-year-old Lando Norris while his teammate Daniel Ricciardo had to retire in the final laps of the race due to an issue.

Norris was able to end his race in seventh place, taking advantage of the Virtual Safety Car deployed soon after Ricciardo and Alonso’s retirements. McLaren finished in a position they didn’t expect to, as Norris said soon after the race.

He said: “We were lucky with the safety car; we had our chance to gain back the positions we lost in the first laps of the race. I had the chance to get P6 but I’m quite happy with that. I had a battle with Ocon in the last laps, but Alpine’s speed on the straights was insane compared to ours.”

After finishing well away from the points in Bahrain, McLaren did make a step forward in Jeddah, although they're still a very long way off where they found themselves in 2020 and 2021.

The Brit concedes that it will take months for the team to move forward, at best. 

Norris also declared: “We are in the same position we were before. If we look back to Bahrain we were terrible, so we have to be honest with that. We went forward and catch cars we didn’t expect to, like Alpine. We have a lot of work to do. I don’t think we’ll get back to where we were in the short term. It is going to take some months, but we’ll work as hard as we can to do it."

A better weekend with some good points pic.twitter.com/9HAxlM6mI4

— Lando Norris (@LandoNorris) March 27, 2022