After three years the Australian fans could enjoy a day at the Albert Park Street circuit. McLaren, with the Australian Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris, showed the pace they never seemed to have this year.

Lando Norris collected some great laps on Saturday, ending P4 in Q3 and very much best of the rest behind Ferrari and Red Bull.

Norris was in great shape compared to the first two races of the year and comfortable with the car. The English driver seemed happy with his performance and commented his performance soon after thee session: “We fought in Bahrain and tried to get Q2, in Saudi Arabia, we almost got into Q3, today we ended up in good positions. We took some steps forward as a team and our car seems to be a little bit faster compared to others on this track. Our pace was very good, better than our expectations. We hope it will be the same tomorrow”

Norris also added: “It feels like a pole position after these last weeks. It is nice to see; a good result for myself and a good result for the team. It is difficult to say if the car has improved globally or just for this kind of track. Whatever the reason is I’m happy with the result. I think we’ll fight with Mercedes, and also Alpine which seems to be very strong this year.”

Norris and his team are more positive than the two races in Jeddah and Bahrain: “After analyzing all the data we decided to make some changes: as now it looks like it was a good decision. It’s a good start, we hope to continue like that and find other improvements."