Norris praises car: 'Upgrades did what they were supposed to do'

McLaren's season so far has been mostly marked by disappointing results. The team closed the first two races without scoring a single point, and although both drivers finished in the top ten in Australia, they were helped in that race by the large number of dropouts. In Baku, things finally look a bit more attainable, with Norris in spot seven in qualifying and his teammate Oscar Piastri in spot ten.

"Definitely before today, 100%, we would have taken seventh," Norris told Sky Sports. "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 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."

Upgrades for McLaren pay off immediately

McLaren brought a host of upgrades to Baku. At the start of the season, Norris was still stating that this series of upgrades really should have been in the car from the start to make it competitive.

"We had good confidence that we could put them on and things run cleanly and that's what happened," Norris said of the new upgrades to the car. "The team's done a great job getting the parts here and allowing them to work straightaway. We're still one second off. We maybe should have been 0.8 seconds off, which is still a very good job, but we should have been four positions higher."