Tag Archives: lando-norris

The place swap between McLaren team mates Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris at Monza created something of a storm on social media, and while the former wasn’t happy at the time, it was pretty clear that there was some logic to the move.

The problem was that there was too much focus on the poor pit stop – which as Piastri related on the radio should be seen as part of racing – and less on the fact that the Australian had been given the more favourable first stop in essence to protect him from a potential undercut by Charles Leclerc.

That plus the fact that Norris had given his blessing to the change of pitstop priority on the basis that he didn’t lose his position meant that there were a lot of factors at play.

Indeed after internal discussions to clarify why it was done there has been no dramatic change of policy or suggestion that it won’t happen again, should the same (unlikely) circumstances arise.

On Thursday in Baku Norris was adamant that it was business as usual in the Woking camp.

“All exactly as it was,” he said. “I mean, some things had to be clarified. There was some things at that point that I didn’t know about – the undercut from Leclerc, things I didn’t know in my post-race interviews at the time that also played a part in the reasoning of the decision that the team made.

“And the fact it was not just a pit stop which made that decision, it was more so the other things. So I mean clarification, but nothing from the fact that we both agreed with it after, and accepted as that’s what we agree as a team.”

Norris was keen to downplay the role of the team in intervening to keep things fair in the battle between the two drivers.

“Honestly, I think there’s a lot less than you think. This was one of the first things in quite a long time, and like I just said, it wasn’t the fact I had a slow pit stop which was the reasoning.

“It was more the fact of the changing of positions, the sequencing of things, which was the same as – I know a very different time – but the same as Hungary last year.

“That was actually the more the reasoning of it, combined with the pit stop, which then made the decision. So there’s not been many things apart from that.

“Of course, they try and keep things fair between us, but it’s not been many things where they’ve had to actually get involved and do anything to help one or the other.”

Norris insisted that in essence he and his title rival are still free to race, despite the Monza intervention leading some folk to believe otherwise.

“Of course, how things then look because of something that happened last weekend gives everyone a very different opinion or oversight on things.

“But if you make it as simple as and kind of how we done it is as simple as what happened in Hungary last year, was a very similar thing, that the driver in the lead has priority in a pit stop sequence. That’s exactly what we were entering last weekend, that things don’t change.

“But the fact is, as soon as we just re-established the position, Oscar could race me freely, still had the advantage of starting basically on my gearbox and trying to race me. So he still gained overall.

“But otherwise, we’ve been free every time to race. It’s just like one lap of a pit sequence is when the lead driver always has priority, and that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will continue to be. But otherwise we’re free to race.”

With eight races to go and deficit of 31 points Norris faces a massive challenge in the coming weeks unless Piastri has a non-finish or some kind of disaster.

If Norris beats in a one-two finish in the next four races (and the Austin sprint) he can in theory close the gap to just two points over those four weekends – but clearly doing that will be nigh on impossible given the way form has swing back and forth between the two of them.

However he remains confident that there are tracks coming up where he could have the advantage.

“I mean there’s a couple, when I just look at my results from last year,” he said when I asked where he though he might be ahead. “Singapore was one of my best last season, and others. But Oscar has also improved this season, so even if I had the biggest advantage last year, in some ways, I put it behind me, and I have to reset and just look ahead to another season, another weekend.

“There’s certainly some I feel better at than others. At the same time, the car has changed this year, and certainly some of my feelings that I had last year and my confidence level that I had at tracks last year is, is not the same as what I had this year. So that’s taken into account too.

“But there’s not been either one of us dominating at any kind of weekend this season. So I don’t expect any greatness. I just expect close battles, and therefore every little thing is important at the minute, and that’s also what I need, just to keep working hard.”

His title hopes took a huge knock in Zandvoort but Norris is keen to move on

A Formula 1 World Championship campaign is made up of 24 race weekends, and they all count. However if Lando Norris does eventually lose out to McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri by a margin of fewer than 18 points then his mechanical retirement in Zandvoort will perhaps be remembered as the unluckiest break of his season.

Failures are rare amongst the frontrunning teams these days, but down the years the destination of many titles has swung on the basis of retirement or two here or there.

What was perhaps most impressive was Norris’s calm demeanour on team radio as he coasted to a stop and prepared to abandon the car.

In effect the fact that he had done nothing wrong allowed him to quickly accept that it pure bad luck had just robbed him of second place and 18 points, and there was nothing he could do about it.

And intriguingly he also suggested that his title hopes took such a big knock, and Piastri has such a large lead, that he now has less to lose.

“It wasn’t my fault, so nothing I can really do,” he said when I asked about his measured response to the failure.

“Just not my weekend, a little bit unlucky yesterday with the wind and unlucky today. So nothing much. Out of my control.

“So a tough one. Of course it’s frustrating. It hurts a bit in just for sure, in the championship point of view, it’s a lot of points to lose so quickly and so easily. But, yeah, nothing I can control now, so just take it on the chin and move on.”

The McLaren drivers have benefited from bulletproof reliability on the chassis and Pu side in recent seasons. So was it perhaps inevitable that eventually something would go awry? Norris didn’t see it that way.

“Not even, because I think the team and HPP have done a very good job over the last two years. I think we’ve had pretty mu,ch minimal… This might be the first one that I can remember that’s cost us any points or anything at all.

“So it’s not even inevitable at like this point, because everyone works to such high standards, we don’t expect anything, really. So that’s why it’s more again just unlucky.

“It’s not like in the olden days, when used to pretty much blow up every other race. I don’t think it is inevitable, but we don’t expect it nowadays, so it’s just, yeah, frustrating, unlucky. And that’s it.”

Piastri’s lead has now grown to a healthy 34 points, and while we still have nine weekends to go – including a few sprints – it’s starting to look like a difficult task for Norris.

“The only thing I can do is try to win every race!,” he said. “That’s going to be difficult, but I’ll make sure I give it everything I can. I thought honestly this weekend was good, it wasn’t by ever much, and I didn’t lose out by much in quali, but I felt always pretty on top of things, and a couple little areas to improve on.

“But if it wasn’t for a little gust of wind down the start/finish yesterday, I’d be on pole, and I’m sure the race would have looked a bit different today. The pace was very strong today.

“So there are so many positives. It’s just close. I have a good teammate. He’s strong, he’s quick in every situation, every scenario. So it’s hard to get things back on someone who’s just good in pretty much every situation.

“But today is a different situation. It’s just unlucky. It’s not my fault, and sometimes that’s just racing.

“It certainly hasn’t helped the [title] race. It’s only made it harder for me, and put me under more pressure. But it’s almost a big enough gap now that I can just chill out about it and just go for it…”

A year ago McLaren was just starting to emerge as the team to beat, which meant that race wins were sup for grabs for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

In Hungary the team faced its biggest challenge up to that point in terms of balancing the interests of its two drivers.

What looked like a smart strategy call intended to maximise the team’s overall result became a little complicated when it reversed the positions and put Norris ahead of Piastri.

When Norris was told to let his team mate back past he was reluctant to do so, and while he eventually did follow instructions the episode somewhat overshadowed the Australian’s first victory.

Twelve months on and the team has been through a few more difficult situations, and each one has been something of a learning exercise, and potentially added layers to the Papaya Rules.

And given that the title is at stake and each race becomes more important as the number of points available reduces, we can guess that there could be further awkward scenarios yet to come.

However the team is now much better equipped now to deal with such eventualities, as Andrea Stella confirmed when I asked him about the subject.

“It was one year ago,” said the Italian. “To me, it looks like it was 10 years ago in terms of how much has happened from a racing point of view, how much has happened in terms of the rate of development of the team, or growth of the team, in the way the results that we have been able to achieve since then.

“But as part of this journey, there’s also a journey that has to do with the improving our way of going racing, what we call the racing approach.

“We have reviewed extensively one year ago, the race here in Hungary, and then we kept this diligent, rigorous approach to reviewing and learning, and we have as much as possible, formalised everything that we learned into our racing approach.

“And the thing that makes me most proud is that Lando and Oscar have always contributed very genuinely, very honestly, very transparently, just bringing their values into the way we go racing. So we’ve gone a long way. I think we have established a pretty robust platform in terms of how we go racing.”

He knows that it could get stressful in the coming weeks: “We are going to be challenged, because racing in F1 is difficult, but so far, and for the remainder of the season, I’m really proud and happy with what, with the way we’ve been going racing, and with the way in which Lando and Oscar have sustained the journey of the team.”

The team may have missed pole in Hungary, but Stella remains confident that the team has a strong package for the remainder of the season.

He points out that in contrast to the recent past – when the team tended to bundle upgrades together and bring them in one hit – this season there’s been more of a drip feed of performance items.

“We have seen a very positive trend in terms of our competitiveness, especially, I would say over the last three events in which we have finished P1/P2.

“This is not only because we started with a competitive car, but actually we have upgraded the car since Canada with what was in the past a single instalment upgrade. So it would have been very noticeable – McLaren bring a new car and improves by a few tenths of a second.

“But in the recent races, we have upgraded the car with some parts at pretty much each race, so we have become faster. I think here, the Hungaroring, despite the result in Q3 has actually proven that the car is fast.

“I think every single session we were P1/P2 by a decent chunk compared to the next team. This makes us very positive about the reminder of the season.

“We look forward to starting racing again after the shutdown. I think we have some tracks that will be favourable to us again, like Zandvoort, and we have also done some specific work for some tracks like Monza or Vegas in which, not necessarily last year we were dominant, and we knew that we needed to do some work for the performance at low drag.

“So we definitely look forward to the second part of the season, and we expect to be competitive.”

As for this weekend, Stella says the tricky conditions contributed to a cautious approach by his drivers, neither of whom could afford to make a mistake that dropped them down the order. Charles Leclerc in contract had nothing to lose and took his chance in style.

“I think it’s an interesting qualifying in terms of understanding how things go for an F1 car, because definitely we had a significant change of conditions. You can see in the meteo data a change in terms of wind direction, wind intensity, temperature, humidity, everything changed.

“And everyone from Q2 up until when we were pretty competitive, we put together definitely strong laps, from Q2 to Q3, everyone went slower. We went slower by about half a second in average.

“Actually, we simulated the change of conditions in our simulations, and it gives a little bit less than that, but about four-tenths of a second. But Ferrari and Leclerc managed to go actually faster. So the track was definitely slower.

“I think for Lando and Oscar, after they had seen in the first run that conditions had changed, that the grip wasn’t what they expected, that every corner was going to be a bit unpredictable, therefore, the lap time didn’t come.

“I think in the second set, they needed to be a bit cautious, because obviously, when you race for the championship, you want to make sure that you are there. I think this is a slightly different approach for Charles. I think it just went, went for it, like, I don’t think I have much to lose here.

“And it paid off. And this is a credit and merit to a very good execution by Ferrari and Charles.”

The conditions in Hungary were very specific, but Stella paints an interesting scenario.

What about the next time we get a rain-affected session, or places like Baku and Singapore, where there is very little margin for error? As their battle gets tighter will Norris and Piastri again leave a few vital hundredths on the table as they ensure that they don’t mess up that crucial last lap in Q3 – and potentially allow others to sneak ahead? It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Kimi Antonelli’s honesty continues to be refreshing, and not just when the Mercedes Formula 1 rookie tells the media about mistakes he’s made, or admits to underperforming in some way.

After main qualifying in Spa last weekend he told us that he would be making setup changes and starting from the pitlane, a strategy that teams usually like to keep quiet until the last minute as they don’t want to give rivals information that might be useful.

On Thursday in Hungary he was happy to reveal that Mercedes is returning to the older rear suspension spec this weekend in attempt not just to find overall performance, but more specifically to help him get back his confidence in the car.

When I asked George Russell about the impact of the change he replied, “That was supposed to be a secret!”.

The Brit may well have been joking, but anyway it was another welcome sign that Antonelli remains an open book.

Mercedes introduced a rear suspension upgrade in Imola that went off the car for Barcelona, but returned for Montreal.

A Russell win and third place for Antonelli appeared to validate it as an improvement, but the Italian’s subsequent struggles and Russell’s own drop in form eventually led the team to query it. Hence the return to the older spec this weekend.

“It’s been on the cards for a little while,” said Russell in answer to my question. “It’s part of development. We’ve seen it in other teams as well.

“This season, they bring things to the car, and you’re looking for that last sort of tenth of a second, and you often see the gains. Before you put it on the car you don’t know what the limitations are going to be. So there’s no guarantee.

“That’s the reason why we’ve taken a step back. It could be a factor. We’ll use this weekend to assess. But you know, if you just look at the results as a whole, we clearly have gone backwards, and we need to go back to a baseline that we know.”

It’s clear that Antonelli has a lot riding on the change as he tries to get out of the confidence black hole that he’s been in of late.

“This weekend we are going back on the old suspension,” he said. “And that hopefully will bring the feeling back, because since we moved to that suspension, apart from Canada, I’ve been struggling to drive the car and getting the confidence.

“And probably also my side I didn’t adapt the best, because I was always trying to keep my style, and to drive the car the way I wanted, but it didn’t really work out. And George, on the other hand, has been adapting better.

“Also, he has a different driving style, but he’s been able to adapt a bit better. And I think that’s what’s been hurting me in this European season. So hopefully, by going back to the old suspension, it will bring back a bit the feeling I had prior to the start of the European season.”

Expanding on the theme Antonelli gave some intriguing details.

“Well the thing is with my aggressive style, with the way I was driving it, I was making the car even more unpredictable. So when I was really trying to push it, it’s like was hard to feel if it was going to stick or not.

“So when you’re on that fine line, it can really make the difference. If you have the confidence and you know it’s going to stick, it can really make the difference.

“But in my case, especially with the style I was driving the car, I was just making it more unpredictable, and I was just having no confidence, because every time I was even trying to push more the car was struggling to take it, or was just giving me signals that made me feel like it was not going to stick.

“So that’s why I’ve been also trying to change a bit the way I was driving to go towards the car, but I think I didn’t do a really good job on that. And, yeah, I just hope that with old suspension it’s going to bring the good feeling back.”

The fact that Mercedes did so well in Canada with the now rejected upgrade is an obvious area of interest – and Antonelli had a good explanation as to why that circuit proved so favourable.

“Definitely Montreal is a very special track,” he said. “The grip is very high, the tarmac is quite closed. But at the end of the day in Montreal it’s all straight line braking, and then you have the chicanes, which is all about setting the car nicely on the first part, and then accelerating for the second part.

“So the new suspension was really good for straight line braking and combined traction, it was giving us a really good combined traction phase. So that was the best for Montreal, and that’s why we were so strong.

“So I think that’s that was the main thing. Montreal is such a special track, and it was really good for our suspension, mainly because we had no real combined entry corner at high speed.”

He added: “When we went back after Canada, obviously we faced really high-speed tracks, and that I think hurt even more the confidence, just because it was quite tricky. And as I said before, with my driving, I was making the car even more unpredictable.

“So especially if you have an unpredictable car in a high-speed circuit, it’s really hard to push it to the limit, because you never know if it’s going to stick or not.”

Hopefully this weekend will see the Italian find the answers that he’s looking for. If he doesn’t it could be a painful summer break until action resumes at Zandvoort, if his reference to the short gap between his difficult Belgian GP and Hungary is anything to go by.

“I think in this case I like to have back to backs,” he said. “Because obviously you’re in the rhythm, which is nice. At the same time [Spa was] a difficult weekend, and I really want to do well this weekend before going to the summer break.

“And I think if I would have had a big gap, would have been really hard, because I would have been busting my balls the whole time! So I’m happy that we have another race weekend straight after…”

Lando Norris came to Belgium on the back of a pair of race wins in Austria and Britain, having put his Canadian GP nightmare well behind him.

The first was a particularly impressive performance given that it came soon after his Montreal disappointment.

Of course at Silverstone he benefited from the penalty that race leader Oscar Piastri landed. However he still had to get the job done in tricky circumstances. A win is a win, and it was a huge boost to his morale.

If he’s going to beat his McLaren team mate to the World Championship Norris has to keep up that momentum and outscore the Australian as often as he can, starting with Spa this weekend.

He has had his struggles this year as he’s tried to get the most out of the car when it matters in qualifying. Meanwhile Piastri has stepped up his game in all areas, and has been impressively consistent.

The last two races gave Norris a chance to recover his mojo and start to get his campaign back on track.

“I feel like I climbed a little bit back to where I was,” he said at Spa. “I certainly feel happier. Austria was a place I felt the happiest, even happier than I was in Silverstone, with the car, with the knowledge of where I can push, how I can push, and all those things. It’s always been a good track for me.

“So I think a selection of things came together. And the pace I had then in qualifying was quite easily and most convincingly, the best I’ve had all season, and just my laps consistently were always up there in P1. I think there was some positive things that came from that.”

Norris concedes that he’s still working on how to get the best from the MCL39.

“We’re still trying to work on things to give me more from the car,” he said. “In order to allow me to unlock that more often, like I was doing last season. There are certain things that I just had to work on and be better at, and I feel like I have.

“A nice thing is that I had the two wins. The most positive thing from those two weekends was just that the pace was better from the off, and I was more comfortable with the car and in understanding how to get the most pace from it at times, that brings a more of a smile to my face than just winning the race itself, because it’s progress, and that’s always a very good thing, it’s a very rewarding thing.

“But there’s still some more I need to get. There’s still more things. I feel better than what I did. So do I feel more confident that I can have more performances like that? Yes.

“Do I feel as good as I still felt last season, and that I’m performing at the same level consistently enough? I would still say no.

“I have more understanding of everything now. We’re talking my new things like small, incredibly small gains here and there. I feel more of a threat now, yes, but am I happy enough still with where I’m at, where the car is, and my harmony with the car, it’s still not to the level that I that I want.”

That was a typically honest assessment from Norris, who always wears his heart on his sleeve.

He’s not blaming the car or anyone else – he knows he has to do a better job.

“My driving, how I drive the car, my ability to adapt to more driving styles, per se,” he said. “That’s really the main thing, working at how I drive the car. It’s also my job at the end of the day to drive whatever car I get given as quickly as possible.

“But it’s a mixture, also some more things away from the track, with my team, I have a very good group of people around me.

“So I’m working on the things for on the track and off the track, how I can approach the weekends in a better way, most of which is how I can work on being a better driver in the situation of struggling with things that I don’t like, or I’m not used to, or changes on the car for this year.”

Spa provides everyone with a curveball, as the sprint format, potential for rain and a tricky Pirelli compound step in the dry make life complicated.

For McLaren you can throw in the new floor, validated in practice at Silverstone but not raced, and it could be a tricky weekend to get right. Norris and Piastri might not be able to focus solely on beating each other.

“I think it’s definitely a weekend where there’s just a lot of opportunity for everyone, and even more than Silverstone.

“[Often this year] we have an advantage over everyone, because the team give us such a good car, but I don’t expect that as much on a weekend like this, like with the weather, how It’s going to be – it could be dry and then suddenly rain at different points.

“And you might have someone I guess who gets half a lap more in the dry section on track, and then the rain comes again.

“And that’s what is also going to happen to the season. It’s more about it can be maybe that bit more consistent, rather than who can be quicker on one weekend than the other.”

Eight races and a third of the way into the 2025 Formula 1 season and remarkably McLaren team mates Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris are just three points apart in the World Championship.

Piastri enjoyed a great start to the season, but after something of a blip Norris had the edge in Monaco, taking the pole and the win.

It was something of a scrappy weekend for the Aussie, who had an off in practice and dinged the barriers on multiple occasions as he pushed the limits.

The margins are fine when you are fighting for wins, and it says a lot that he still earned third place despite things not going entirely smoothly.

It will be fascinating to see in Barcelona if Norris has made a genuine step in terms of his qualifying performance, and if Monaco really has given his confidence an all-round boost.

Piastri meanwhile has the sort of mindset that will allow him to learn from last weekend and quickly move on.

Team bosses Andrea Stella and Zak Brown face the tricky challenge of being fair to both men, and giving both a shot the title.

The drivers in turn have to prioritise the interests of the team, and while the constructors’ table is looking favourable for the Woking camp at the moment, there’s still a long way to go.

Piastri has a typically level-headed view of the situation, and he sees a much bigger picture, one that extends far beyond this season’s title fight.

“I think going into the year we knew that it’s impossible to have your own personal goal directly in parallel with the team’s,” he says.

“And that’s something we’ve both been very frank about, something that the team have been very aware of. Because at the end of last year, we felt that if we went to this year with a car as strong as we finished with, we’d be in this situation.

“I think we’ve been very good at being open about it, just talking about it, but we’re never going to do anything that’s unsportsmanlike or puts the team in a bad light, or puts ourselves in a bad light.

“I think that’s just not who Lando and I are. Of course, we want to go out and beat each other every weekend, but we’re never going to cross that line that’s going to cause damage that can’t be repaired, because I’ve said it a few times now, we don’t want just one opportunity at this.

“We’re both at McLaren for a very long time after this year, and we want to fight for the championship every single year. And I think we both understand it’s pretty unwise to try and win one championship and bring the house down with it…”

He’s pleased with how McLaren is keeping the right balance: “I don’t think every team would handle it as we are, no. I think at the same time, there’s not many teams in our situation.

“We’ve got a very good lead in the constructors’ championship at the moment, and whilst we’re continuing to build that gap, I think it’s the right thing to do to let us both try and fight for a championship.”

How the fight will unfold in Spain this weekend and over the remaining races of the season.

“It’s always been tight everywhere we’ve gone,” says Piastri. “There’s been weekends where I’ve been a bit quicker, there’s been weekends where Lando has been a bit quicker, but they’ve not necessarily been the weekends that we’ve beat each other on. There’s more to it than just being fast.

“So I think it’s going to ebb and flow a bit through the whole year. But I’m confident, we’ve analysed what went a little bit wrong in Monaco.

“It still wasn’t a terrible weekend, but just not as good as some of the weekends have been this year for me. So we’ve looked at what we can do a bit better, and we’ll try and put that in action.”

Piastri insists there’s no obvious pattern in terms of which of the pair has an advantage at a particular track.

“Not necessarily, no. I mean, it’s not one type of track that’s been good for me. It’s not one type of corner that’s been good. It’s if anything more who hooks it up on that day, so to speak. So there’s no clear trends, I mean, there never really have been clear trends.

“Of course, there’s slight strengths and slight weaknesses, but again, those also don’t always transfer from track to track.

“One weekend I might be a bit quicker in a high-speed corner. The next weekend it might be Lando. So it’s very, very tight between us. I think we’ve got very similar strengths and weaknesses, and I expect that to stay the same.”

The elephant in the room is that despite downplaying his own chances Max Verstappen continues to score well, and with the McLaren guys sharing out the big points, the Red Bull driver is still very much in contention.

“I don’t think he can be counted out,” says Piastri. “I think the gap is not very large at the moment. And they’ve genuinely been competitive at a decent number of circuits now.

“Of course, there’s been weekends where we’ve been stronger, but again, I think they’ve been developing their car. They’ve been finding more performance. So I think at this point, Max is definitely still in the fight.”

Not having to juggle the interests of both drivers obviously makes Christian Horner’s job easier, but Piastri believes that on balance having two cars in the fight is better than one.

“It helps in some situations. You don’t have to balance both the strategies. You can put all the attention on Max. But at the same time I think Lando and I do gain something from having each other pushing.

“Max is obviously very experienced and very talented. But I do think that Lando and I found some amount of lap time from having competitive teammates.

“Of course, that comes with challenges as well. But ultimately, we want to be fighting for a championship, beating everyone on the grid.

“And if you’ve got someone there pushing you, then whilst it gives you some challenges at time, as a team and as a driver, it also increases your level, which is ultimately what you want.”

Norris can’t afford to read headlines about another below par Saturday

The struggles of Lando Norris in qualifying this year have been well documented, and the McLaren man has been very honest about not feeling at one with the MCL39.

In Monaco a below par Saturday could be particularly costly in the title battle, even allowing for the new two-stop tyre regs meaning that pole is not necessarily a guarantee of victory.

Norris has been trying hard with his engineers to get to the bottom of his problems, but team mate Oscar Piastri has generally (but not always) had the edge over one lap in 2025.

“I’m confident I have the speed,” Norris said on Thursday. “But it’s true that this year I’ve not been able to put things together as well as what I have done in the past, for many, many years.

“So it’s always something I’ve been very at one with, and very – I wouldn’t always say, confident – but something I’ve always just been very, very strong in. And I’ve just not done well enough this season.

“So it’s not like I’m doing a bad job, but when you’re against the best in the world, not doing a perfect job, is also the definition of probably doing a bad job.

“I’m focusing on and I’m working with my team when I’m back home, or when I’m here at the track, on improving these things, because it’s been my biggest let down so far of my season.”

Norris has no issues with his race performance this season, although Piastri is ahead in the points after his string of victories.

“My races on Sunday have been very strong,” he said. “Maybe not every one, but my decision making, so my Sundays I don’t even need to think about. I’m very happy with them.

“My opportunity is on Saturday. So I know what I need to focus on, but like I said before, and I’ve said the last few weeks, it still takes time.

“It takes work from both halves, both from me as a driver, and people I work with, and also as a team, providing me the equipment, the feelings that I need to perform at the level that I did last season.

“I think the level I performed at last season is a level that will have got me a lot more poles this year. So I’ve got it. I know that is there somewhere, but unlocking it just takes work and time.”

Just how long it might take remains a grey area – and the clock is ticking.

“It could be days, or it could be months,” he said. “But I’d say weeks, weeks still is probably the best way of saying it. It could be a matter of months.

“It’s a constant thing that we’re looking into, and trying different things, and from those different things that we try, we get different answers, and that might lead us to more stuff. So, yeah, it could be weeks. It could be still a couple months.”

Meanwhile Norris is sceptical about Max Verstappen’s efforts to downplay Red Bull’s potential form in Monaco.

The Dutchman has been cast as the plucky underdog in 2025, and Norris doesn’t see it that way.

“They won last weekend, they’ve been pole several times this season,” he said. “Max has won several races, he should have won Saudi.

“There’s also slow speed corners in Imola, where they were very strong. So I think we have more of the facts than I think what people on the outside do. There’s a lot of negative stuff about how bad their car is, but they’re very quick.

“We’ve said that the whole season. Outside people have underestimated them, but we know that they’re a threat, they have been the whole year. They will continue to be, especially when you have a team that has won many World Championships, especially in the last 5-10 years.

“And they have Max. And I don’t think you can ever doubt them. They won last weekend because they deserved it. They were good in slow-speed, they were good in high-speed, and they have a good car, but like we saw between Miami and Imola for ourselves, we can look like heroes one weekend and then we get beaten the next.

“And it’s not because anything changed, literally just the track. The car is the same. Obviously, tyres were the same, it’s literally just the track is different, and we go from one to the other. So we just take every weekend as it comes. They could be amazing here. And we’ll wait and see.”