Formula One champion Lando Norris described his first day in McLaren’s new car as a “decent day” after completing 77 laps at the Barcelona shakedown test on Wednesday.

The 26-year-old Briton will hand the MCL40 over to Australian teammate Oscar Piastri for Thursday’s session before returning on Friday for McLaren’s final day at the Circuit de Catalunya.

“It was just nice to be back, nice to see a number one on my car—pretty cool and still pretty surreal. It’s a good feeling,” Norris said after running in cold conditions.

“Our first day on track, first time everyone gets to see the car in one piece. It literally wasn’t built until this morning… so it’s nice to see it all come together. Then I got to have some fun driving it, and it turned out to be a decent day. Today was really just about getting a first understanding of the car and how it works, going through the manual.”

The five-day test began behind closed doors on Monday, with teams free to choose which of the three days they run. Williams were absent, while Mercedes, who supply engines to McLaren, reported encouraging mileage with George Russell and Kimi Antonelli alternating in their car.

Russell completed 92 laps in the morning, bringing his two-day total to 187 laps, and said reliability had gone “relatively smoothly.” Antonelli added 91 laps in the afternoon, finishing his two days with 147 laps.

“We are pleased with the mileage we achieved today and have ticked off most of the objectives we set ourselves for the first two days in Barcelona,” said Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. “The car has been reliable, and we’ve been able to put together multiple race distances. That’s encouraging as an initial step.”

Elsewhere, Mercedes-powered Alpine completed 125 laps, with Pierre Gasly doing 67 in the afternoon. Haas faced two reliability issues in their Ferrari-powered car, the second being more serious, team boss Ayao Komatsu confirmed.

“I’m not worried about the morning issue, but the one in the afternoon was more serious, and we are analysing exactly what happened,” Komatsu said.

Audi, the former Sauber team now running their own power unit, also lost time in the morning due to a technical problem.