Lando Norris has contended that he doesn’t want to be reliant on McLaren introducing upgrades to address his ongoing struggles with the team’s 2025 Formula 1 car.
McLaren has delivered on the pre-season expectation that it would be the team to beat as the team has begun the season with four victories in the opening five races.
However, Norris hasn’t triumphed since the opener in Australia as issues extracting the MCL39’s potential have enabled team-mate Oscar Piastri to seize the initiative.
The Briton’s troubles were exposed at the past two rounds as mishaps in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where he crashed in Q3, consigned him to damage limitation runs.
Norris expressed that he comes into this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix – where he claimed his maiden win in 2024 – eager to put his work in the background into action.
“I’m working on my things,” Norris told media including Motorsport Week.
“I’m working on what to improve and trying to figure out all the things behind the scenes on what I need to do better on.
“It’s certainly not because of a lack of speed or lack of ability to do so. I’ve often led the way in Q1 and Q2, but always when I’ve got to Q3 then it’s not going to plan.
“So yeah, I think there’s stuff on the driving side and other things from the car side where just things haven’t clicked.
“But I’m working on it and hopefully this weekend I can put it into practice.”
Norris had ‘productive’ break
But Norris has warned that the small gap since the previous event in Jeddah hasn’t been enough time to inspire a complete solution to his limitations with the MCL39.
“The break was very well needed for everyone. But definitely myself, it was nice to get away from things and have a bit of a reset,” he added.
“But it was productive. I would say a couple of weeks.
“That doesn’t mean a lot of stuff has changed for this weekend. It’s not like things are going to magically work as I would love.
“But I think there’s been a lot more understanding over the last couple of weeks of certain things, certain feelings, what could have affected things, what maybe didn’t.
“So, you know, majority of my sim work was based upon that and trying to understand some of these things, which is good.
“But then it’s about understanding them further, knowing what measures you can take to start changing things on the car and what you want to put resources into.
“So it’s a bigger thing than just saying this or that. But yeah, there’s been a lot more understanding. And I think that’s the main thing.
“So as a team, then we need to work on how we can bring it to the car.”
Norris doesn’t want to be dependent on McLaren changes
But while he admitted that updates aimed at making the car easier to drive are in the pipeline, Norris has claimed that he doesn’t want to be dependent on their arrival.
“I certainly think it will help,” he acknowledged. “I don’t honestly know the exact timeline of things.
“It’s also a mixture of things that will probably slowly come and be implemented over time.
“But I also don’t want to just rely on that myself. There’s also things I’m trying to work on separately.
“And hopefully that’s a better fix than waiting for the upgrades to come.
“But it’s good that we’re working as a team. And the team are working hard to try and understand these things.
“Because it’s been clear that there have been some differences from last year. In how the car works and how it acts.
“And then how I’m able to get a lot of time out of it and perform. So it’s a mixture of things.
“But yeah, I’m confident that we have to be a little bit patient with certain things. Some things are bigger than us.
“But it takes time, some of these things. So I just keep my head down and keep pushing myself.”
READ MORE – How Lando Norris plans to get over McLaren issues in Miami
Discussion about this post