Tag Archives: norris

One of the more intriguing aspects of the ongoing battle between McLaren Formula 1 team mates Lando Norris is that since Canada they have been driving subtly different cars.

In Montreal Norris ran a front suspension update that Piastri has opted not to use on the basis that it doesn’t bring performance, and that in effect he doesn’t want to mess with a successful recipe.

What it does do in theory is give Norris some of the feel that he felt was missing earlier in the season, although even he admits that he can’t be sure how much difference it makes given that every track has its own quirks.

You could argue that his strong performance in Austria was evidence that it’s boosted his confidence – although one could speculate that there’s something of a Placebo Effect in action.

“It’s even an answer I can’t give to the team that clearly, if you ask me now, is it better or not?,” he said on Thursday.

“I can’t give a definitive answer. It’s something that we believe might shift things in the right direction. That’s how small of a change it was. It wasn’t like, we know this is going to help, it’s going to do a better job.

“It’s also not a performance item. It’s not something that we’ve got and gone, now we’re going to be quicker. It’s something that might change how the feeling is to the steering and to the front suspension.

“But because you go track-to-track, it’s not something you can necessarily just change between sessions. It’s not where I can just go out and give a clean answer to the team.

“It’s one where I’ve just got to have the confidence and belief in the guys and girls who have put it together and thought of it believe it’s in the right direction to give me maybe some more feelings or a better feeling, or more of a contrast in feeling.

“And I’m happy enough that that’s a good enough answer, that they think it’s better, and I’m confident that it’s going to give me that feeling, but it’s not something I can go, ‘I’m feeling a lot more in the car.’

“I certainly felt more in Austria. Canada is a very separate one and the car is always all over the place in Canada, so it’s hard to judge things there.

“But certainly in Canada, I felt like we unlocked a little bit more, but I also don’t feel like I’m still back to the level necessarily that I was at last year with feeling, understanding, and things like that.”

Piastri meanwhile has preferred to stick with the original spec, and he has no interest in trying the new suspension.

“I’ve not used it ever yet,” said the Australian. “I think the thing is for me, it’s not an upgrade, it’s just something that is different. It makes some things potentially a bit better. It makes some things a bit worse.

“If it was just all benefits, I would be putting it on with no questions asked. But for me, I’ve not, not really struggled with that kind of particular feeling.

“The year’s been going pretty well, so I’m keener to just keep the car consistent, and worry about how we get the most out of the setup and the other upgrades we actually have than this change to the suspension.”

As the drivers suggest, it’s a subtle difference, but nevertheless it’s an interesting twist to what will be a very closely fought contest over the second half of the season.

Norris had the upper hand in Austria, although his team mate didn’t get his final Q3 run in due to yellow flags, and thus started only third.

“I think it is a very tight battle,” said Piastri. “I think it will be for the rest of the year. I think Canada I don’t was the best Sunday for me, definitely, in terms of pace, but I think last weekend was probably one of the better ones.

“I think qualifying ultimately, we’ll never know what was possible. But my first lap of Q3 or the only lap of Q3 was not great, even compared to some of my Q2 laps.

“So I think last weekend, I was happy with my pace, especially on Sunday. But I expect it to ebb and flow through the year. I think the weekends where either of us put our absolute best forward, it’s probably enough either of us to win.

“It’s just that doing that and finding 100% of your potential instead of 99 or 99 and a half is very, very difficult.

“So I think that’s been the difference so far this year. I think we’re very, very evenly matched. And on our good days, either of us is very hard to beat.”

Can Oscar Piastri maintain the momentum that he’s started to build over the first four races of the 2025 Formula 1 season?

He heads into Sunday’s race in Jeddah just three points shy of McLaren team mate Lando Norris. They’ve been closely matched, but Piastri’s late off in the Melbourne rain proved costly and gave the Englishman the initial advantage.

Since then the Aussie has scored two wins from pole position, and he’s shown beyond all doubt that his one-lap pace has taken a big step since last year, when Norris was dominant.

Lando meanwhile has made it clear that he’s not comfortable with the MCL39, and thus far is not maximising his potential.

With his main rival on the backfoot now would seem to be the perfect time for Piastri to press home the advantage.

Amid all the talk of papaya rules and equal treatment if he continues to outqualify and outrace Norris then the World Championship will ultimately take care of itself.

“Qualifying is incredibly important I think,” he said when I put that to him in Jeddah on Thursday.

“Regardless of the kind of intra-team dynamics with pit stop preferences and whatever that that causes. Just the power of clean air is so important. So I think regardless of that, you always want to be qualifying at the front.

“But yes, with two drivers in the same car, I think with very similar pace, whenever you can be ahead, it’s a pretty major advantage.

“So it is going to be important to have good qualifying. But we’ve seen in the past that it’s not always everything, there’s other areas where you can make up the difference, if you do a good enough job.”

Piastri worked over the winter to improve his one-lap form, and it appears to have paid dividends. The team mate qualifying battle now stands at 3:2 in his favour, including the Shanghai sprint.

“I think the hard work we’ve been putting in definitely has been making a difference,” he says. “I think I’ve felt comfortable in qualifying, and felt like I’ve taken a bit of a step up. I think last year it wasn’t much that I often missed out by.

“But this year I’ve had a couple qualifying just on the wrong side of that gap still, but also more qualifyings on the right side of that gap now. So it’s been a lot of hard work in a lot of different areas, trying to get those last few hundredths of a second. And I think it has been paying off.”

His earlier dirty air reference is significant. We’ve seen this year how Lewis Hamilton in the Shanghai sprint and Max Verstappen in Suzuka were able to stay out in front of potentially faster McLarens. Piastri doesn’t believe that the MCL39 suffers more in traffic than other cars.

“Not necessarily, I think everybody struggles with it, it’s pretty similar for most of the teams,” he says. “We saw in China that the Ferrari was very quick through the whole weekend, and they also struggled to get through the dirty air. So I think it’s just a grid wide problem.

“I don’t think it’s specific to us, and I don’t really plan on testing that theory too many times hopefully! It is just difficult for everybody with more and more downforce going on, more and more dirty air.”

One intriguing aspect to the McLaren battle is that the team will have to work hard to ensure equal treatment, and especially that neither driver gets an advantage from having a single set of development parts, which happened on occasion last season when the team had to get new bits to the track asap. Piastri doesn’t see that as an issue this time around.

“I think this year the situation is very, very different,” he says. “I think last year, especially at the beginning of the season, we were incredibly keen to get whatever performance we could onto the car as quickly as possible. And we needed to make up a points deficit, in the constructors’ championship, especially.

“This year, we’re in a very different position. Obviously, we have already a decent gap in the constructors’ championship and both of us fighting for the drivers’ championship.

“It’s expected that that we’ll both have an equal opportunity and the same car to be able to fight for the drivers’ championship, and obviously in the constructors’ championship, we’re in a good place. While we have the opportunity to keep it equal, and have the same car every weekend, we should do that.”

Any advantage that either man can establish will have to come from the cockpit. You don’t have to be a sports psychologist to see the contrasts in approach between the pair, with Norris wearing his heart on his sleeve and being open about his struggles, and Piastri seemingly gliding serenely through each race weekend.

“I think for everyone, they kind of work in different ways,” he says. “For me, trying to stay calm is a very important thing. It helps me get the best out of myself. So that’s how I think I operate the best. And I think it’s been working so far.”

So does he ever get emotional in the car?

“I have been a couple of times through my career,” he admits. “And yeah, I think when they’re negative emotions, it does have a negative impact. So that’s why I try… I think it comes somewhat naturally being calm and trying to stay relaxed, but there’s a lot of conscious effort on that as well.

“But there’s also positive emotions that are there as well. I said after China if you had a camera on me, and you could see my face, I was pretty damn excited.

“So there are emotions out there. The radio is a button for a reason, and you use it when, when you think you should. There’s probably more that you don’t see under the helmet…”

What then of this weekend? Norris had the edge by just 0.163s in Friday’s FP2 session, and it will be fascinating to see how qualifying unfolds when it really matters on Saturday evening.

[If you’re an outlet that can use stories like the above do get in touch as I am available for work!]

Still pals! McLaren team mates Norris and Piastri at Spa

Lando Norris says he was both “stupid” and “silly” not to let his McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri past earlier than he did during the Hungarian GP.

Having been given the earlier pit stop to help protect him from rivals Norris got ahead of leader Piastri, who had dominated the first part of the race.

However when asked by the team to switch the positions back Norris delayed the move and argued his case on the radio, until finally letting Piastri by in the closing laps.

Norris says he now accepts that he should have let the Australian by immediately – and had he done so potentially then had the chance to race him and legitimately earn a victory.

He also conceded that by creating a team orders controversy he had taken attention away from Piastri’s first win and a one-two for his team.

“Could it have been handled slightly differently from both a team side and from a personal side?,” Norris said at Spa on Thursday. “Yes, absolutely. And I think we would not be having this conversation now.

“Whether people on the outside think and kind of come up with their own stories of what happened, and what I would have done, and wouldn’t have done that kind of thing, I don’t mind about that.

“But it’s the things that I could have done, the fact that I kind of clouded over Oscar’s first race win in F1 is something I’ve not felt too proud about.

“The fact that we had a one-two, and that was barely a headline after the race, and nothing was really spoken about it from that side. Yeah, that’s the kind of bits I felt worse about.

“But apart from that, yeah, we discussed it, we’ve spoken about it. Both sides could have done things a little bit better, and a little bit differently. It’s not good that we had it, but it’s a good moment that we’ve had it, we’ve learned from it, and hopefully it’s done better next time.”

Asked by this writer what he would now do differently Norris had one simple answer.

“Just let him past straight away,” he said. “Such a stupid thing that I didn’t, because we’re free to race, and I could just let him pass and still try to overtake and to race.

“It sounds so simple now, but it’s not something that went through my head at the time. So, yeah, such a simple thing like that, I could have done, but I was just in a good rhythm, and things were going well at the time.

“So I questioned it a few times, questioned the team a few times, but I knew as soon as they boxed me ahead of him, or before him, that I was going to have to let him go. I was a bit silly, and didn’t think of letting him go earlier.”

Norris insists that he’s not too stressing too much about what happened.

“I don’t need to overthink it, overcomplicate it,” he said. “A couple of very simple things, I feel like it’s turned into a much bigger deal than it needs to be, and that kind of thing.

“It was always clear, I always knew that I had to let him go, but the longer I waited, just because it didn’t matter if I let him go straight away or at the end, necessarily, the longer I waited, the more people questioned whether I would have done it or not.

“I think that’s the main thing, and a lot of people think that I wouldn’t have done. But I knew I had to. That made no difference.

“But I don’t need to replay it. I just know that I should have let him past earlier, and I still could have had a chance to try and win the race myself, and that’s what I should have done.”

Asked if that was now the obvious choice he said: “If I thought of that at the time, 100%. But I didn’t think of that for whatever reason. I just probably wasn’t thinking of the right things at the time more than anything.

“As they basically said, let him past now, I let him past straight away. So it wasn’t never a fact of was I ignoring and not listening, all of these types of things. It was always clear what I wanted to do, I needed to do, but I just let it go on for a little bit too long.”