Lando Norris has admitted McLaren are heading into the new season in a competitive position, but does not believe they have increased their advantage over the winter.

Several of McLaren’s rivals have named them as pre-season favourites after they posted a series of impressive lap times over long runs in testing two weeks ago. Norris conceded the reigning constructors’ champions “have a good car to start the season” but doesn’t believe they have pulled further ahead of the pack.

“I don’t think in any way we’re superior to any of our main competitors,” he said. “There’s obviously been a lot of chat of that and a lot of things said over the past couple of weeks but I really don’t think we’re any further ahead of competitors than we were last season, or that people think we are.”

McLaren had the second-fastest car on average in terms of single-lap pace last year, but was only narrowly beaten by Red Bull. They set the quickest lap time at eight of the dozen rounds which comprised the second half of last year.

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Norris, who won the final race of last season, expects a close fight from the start of this year. “It’s going to be a tough weekend for us and we’re going to be fighting everyone,” he said.

“But I think we’re in a good position to start off in a strong way and in a confident way. That’s what we want to be and that’s how we want to start the season.”

Mercedes’ George Russell believes McLaren are “absolutely dominant” at the moment while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc also said their rivals had the upper hand in testing.

New Red Bull driver Liam Lawson doubts they have the pace to challenge McLaren this weekend. “From where we saw McLaren in testing, we are not quick enough to fight them, we feel,” he said.

“But obviously you don’t fully know until you drive on a circuit and obviously Bahrain’s very different to here, so we’ll have a clear indication after tomorrow of more or less where we are competitive compared to the others.

“I do believe we’ve improved the car, obviously for me it’s a big improvement and it’s something that for me is good to drive. But obviously Max [Verstappen] has a very good idea of exactly where we were over the last couple of years to where we are now. ”

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