Lando Norris has opened up about his Formula 1 qualifying struggles, pointing to his aggressive driving style as a weakness over a single lap.
This may come as a surprise, as Norris has qualified in the top 10 at all three races this season and has twice beaten his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri.
He said: “Qualifying is the one where I find it a little bit tougher to get everything out of the car. Both from my side, like I said last weekend, trying to get everything out of the car in qualifying I struggle with a bit, on myself and also just with how we are as a team.”
The British have made a sizeable step forward compared to 12 months ago and are consistently battling Ferrari, Aston Martin, and Mercedes in qualifying, while Red Bull holds a clear advantage.
Achieving a strong position on the race grid has become even more important this season, as the cars behind Red Bull are more competitive.
At the season opener in Bahrain, the gap between Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in second place and Lewis Hamilton in ninth was just three-tenths of a second.
Norris admitted that qualifying isn’t his best quality, and the ground-effect cars may not be ideal for him to deliver the ultimate lap time.
“In qualifying, I’ve always been wanting to push quite a bit more in certain areas and kind of want to go out and just be attacking. And I have to do the complete opposite.
“It’s a hard one to get my head around because I want to go out and find another level in qualifying, and you just can’t do that with these tyres and with our car. You almost have to drive it the opposite way.
“So there’s something, almost from being used to the cars a few years ago, that’s kind of punishing me now and not adapting quick enough. But that’s something that’s up to me.
“To execute a perfect qualifying lap every single time, it’s not an easy thing to do. But it’s something we’re working on.”
The 24-year-old has produced blistering lap time in qualifying, taking pole position at the Russian Grand Prix in 2021. By contrast, he has floundered at times, failing to get out of Q1 in last year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix after making a mistake on his flying lap.
Driving at the highest level in Formula 1 is mostly based on instinct, but Norris says the issues may be related to understanding where the limit is.
“If you ask me now, how do I drive a low-speed corner, I got no idea. I don’t,” he said. “One day it’s like this; the next day it is like that. I struggle with just the confidence of knowing exactly how to improve in all cases.
“When it does click, it clicks, and I can have a good quali. But yeah, I just lost a little bit of that feeling over the last couple of years of going out in quali and attacking and putting in the laps that I want to put in.
“It’s hard to make myself not push and not be attacking when you’re competitive and you want to go for a better lap.”
Despite spending extra time in the simulator at McLaren’s factory, the Briton said the environment fails to replicate the pressure of a race weekend.
“It’s tough, because not always is it the best correlation,” added Norris. “There are certain techniques and abilities of trying to drive relaxed. Those are the kind of things you can do on the simulator.
“But recreating that exact emotion of when you’re in the car, and you’re going for a quali lap, it’s not easy to replicate such a thing on a simulator.”
Norris said that less overthinking and a few errors may be the key to unlocking more raw speed.
“A bit of it is trial and error, of just trying to make it a normality,” he said. “The thing is when I drive, I drive so subconsciously, that the less I think of driving, the better I drive
“If I just go out, and I’m watching the grandstands, this is normally when I’m doing a better job. But I’m naturally just going out and pushing.”
