McLaren are heading into the F1 Miami Grand Prix with an upgrade aimed at making the car easier to drive for Lando Norris, who, while second in points through five races, has only managed one win compared to three for teammate and points leader Oscar Piastri, and missed the podium after starting 10th following a crash in Q3 before recovering to finish 4th.
McLaren, Norris “working as a team” to get him to the front
On Thursday, Norris elaborated that while he believes the upgrade in Miami will help, it’s part of a larger process of him getting maximally comfortable with the car to achieve the desired results.
“There are things I’m working on separately, and hopefully that’s a better fix than waiting for other bits to come. But it’s good we’re working as a team and trying to understand these things.”
Norris needs his car to “allow me to drive at the level that I can drive at“
Ultimately Norris sees the gap between where he is with the car and where he’d like to be is small—but, as always in Formula 1, so are the margins.
“I think there are just certain things which don’t allow me to feel what I need to feel and those things are what allow me to drive to the level that I can drive at[…]. It’s not like it’s impossible to drive all of a sudden. It’s just when we’re talking about qualifying split by hundredths of a second, thousandths of a second, that’s what I’m complaining of and nothing more than that.”
Upgrade + soft reset = success for Norris at Miami?
Norris still has three fastest laps in five races and has only finished off the podium once, but he has struggled in Q3 lately, only starting 6th at Bahrain and crashing out to start 10th at Saudi Arabia. He said the “well needed” downtime has led to “a lot more understanding[…] so as a team then, we need to work on how we can bring that to the car.”
“It was nice to get away from things and have a bit of a reset. But it was a productive, I would say, couple of weeks.”
