MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014\u00a0Formula 1\u00a0champion Lando Norris is struggling with his new era McLaren car and frustrated to line up only sixth in Sunday\u2019s season-opening\u00a0Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Norris\u2019 title defence\u00a0comes amid\u00a0sweeping changes to the cars, and the 26-year-old British driver has endured a tough weekend at Albert Park so far.<\/p>\n
F1\u2019s new cars are complex, with unprecedented changes across the chassis and power unit, which now feature an almost 50:50 output split between the turbo 1.6-liter V6 engine and electrical energy harvested from the brakes \u2014 one that requires a new, often counterintuitive driving style.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve come from the best cars ever made in Formula 1, and the nicest to drive, to probably the worst,\u201d he said after Saturday\u2019s qualifying.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s not just coming to grips with his car\u2019s complex energy management systems, but also in getting out on track \u2014 with the Briton losing significant time in Friday\u2019s two practice sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust getting into the rhythm of lifting everywhere to go quicker and using gears you don\u2019t want to use and just understanding that when you lift more, you brake later but you have to brake less,\u201d Norris said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why laps are more valuable than ever. In the past, miss P1, not too bothered. Now, you miss five laps, not only do you as a driver have to figure things out quicker, the engine doesn\u2019t learn what it needs to learn and then you\u2019re just on the back foot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014\u00a0Formula 1\u00a0champion Lando Norris is struggling with his new era McLaren car and frustrated to line…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-520850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}