Aided by tweaked floor and wing changes as part of ongoing modifications to the MCL60, Norris scored the team’s best qualifying finish of the year with a seventh-place finish in Baku.
His time of 1m 41.281s put him behind Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and sixth-placed Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, who was 0.03s ahead of the Briton.
But Norris felt McLaren hadn’t executed its one-lap strategy perfectly at the expense of a top-four start in the GP, while he lamented an extra set of Pirelli tires scrubbed ahead of a separate Saturday sprint day.
Speaking of SkyNorris said: “Definitely before today, 100 per cent, we’ll take (seventh).
“It’s a good result. The sequence of upgrades worked well and the car worked well on this track at the same time. I feel like I’m doing a lot better driving and otherwise.
“I really should have been better. I think we should have been P4 today. A little disappointed, to be honest.
“We haven’t done the best job as a team in terms of making the right decisions. But other than that, things are still positive.
“But we just put ourselves in the middle ground of having a P7 today and not being able to run with new tires tomorrow. So, mixed thinking.
“However, if you look at it from over there, there are a lot of positive things. The team has done a fantastic job of getting the parts here and allowing them to work straight away.
“We were pretty confident we could put them on and everything would go well, and that’s what happened.”
Norris believes the Baku high-speed improvements come from McLaren reducing aerodynamic drag and being able to run in lower downforce settings.
He then added: “We are good at braking zones, we are good at braking in straight lines.
“If you look at Australia (last round), we weren’t bad. It’s just that we added a few things and maybe the track is right for us again. So, a combination.
“We were one second off. We should have been maybe ten-tenths behind, which is still a really good job, but we should have been four places higher.”
Rookie teammate Oscar Piastri secured 10th on the grid but gave up a place to Lance Stroll – who was ahead of the Australian in Q3 , obtained a position, when the two had the same number of flying laps, both 1 meter 41.611 seconds.
A more upbeat Piastri reported he was “a bit uncomfortable” and now had to focus on finishing a few corners to improve his time.
He continued: “It’s probably better than we expected.
“Tomorrow we’ll keep going and see what we can do to make us faster.”