After a spate of strategic errors from the team last time out at the British GP, Lando Norris has defended the squad, saying the team can only improve from here after learning from the past mistakes, which are “simple things” that will come as the team spends more time battling at the very front of the F1 grid, something which it hadn’t properly and frequently done for over 10 years.
McLaren led the British GP with a 1-2 as the rain started to fall, but a decision to avoid double-stacking cost Oscar Piastri his second place as he tumbled back to fifth after losing more than 20 seconds with dry tyres on a very greasy track. Norris kept his lead after getting first choice at the stop, but subsequently lost it by staying out one lap too late as the track transitioned back to dry conditions, losing out to eventual winner Lewis Hamilton.
But the decision to fit the soft tyres on the Briton’s McLaren was perhaps the most baffling, as he had a new set of mediums available, which were the best tyres for the given amount of laps and track conditions, dropping him to third place behind a charging Max Verstappen.
Speaking ahead of the Hungarian GP, Norris said he is “feeling good” despite the latest setbacks, praising the team’s good work with the car performance and noting that it can only improve from here, operationally.
“I feel good. Probably, in a sense, the best we’ve felt,” said Norris. “Yes, we’ve come off the back of a couple of tougher races and not ideal endings. But I think in terms of our confidence level as a team, it’s probably higher than it’s ever been. I’m not overly optimistic or overly confident in any way.
“We’re doing so many things good, like I said many times. We’ve been the best performing team over the last two months, almost. We know we can almost only get better, because we’ve got things to work on and we’re working very hard on those things.
“I feel good, also from a driving point of view. I probably feel the most on top of things, as I have felt. It’s been such a long season and things can change.
“But from a team side and from a personal side, I’m happy that things are going in the right direction.”
The winner of the Miami GP explained how the team has to go through a natural process of learning to deal with the higher stakes of fighting at the very top, and that goes way beyond just drivers and strategists, but the whole operation – and emphasized he’s “happy” that now the team has learned some of it and will only get better from here on in:
“There’s always going to be mistakes, so I think dealing with them is one part of it. And you’re not dealing with losing a P7 or a P8 now, you’re dealing with losing a win or a second.
“But there’s plenty of situations where that’s happened this year from other teams and other drivers. It’s just a newer situation for us and for a lot of the people here at McLaren, because a lot of them are new and weren’t here 10-15 years ago when they were winning races.
“From a mentality point of view, it’s everyone – mechanics, engineers, the people who are making some of the bigger decisions. I get hurt after Silverstone with what happened. We don’t need other people to tell us what we did wrong and how to do better.
“I think we understand that, we know that as a team. You have to learn to deal with the tougher situations and when things don’t go your way, when you mess up and make mistakes, because that’s always going to happen.
“That’s why I’m so positive and I’m so happy now, that even though we’ve not had a perfect start to the year, things could have been better. I’m just so happy that we’ll make better decisions and we’ve learned from those things.”
When asked what the team needs to do in order to iron out its strategic mistakes, Norris pointed out a need to “stick to what we know” instead of trying to come up with cleverer ideas and “invent” things. And he believes this is not a complicated process, as they have to figure out “simple things” to get back to winning ways in 2024:
“They’re just reviews that we do as a team. Making sure we’re asking the right questions, we’re sticking to what we know. It’s easy just to start to try to invent things and come up with the new, best, greatest ideas.
“Trying to think, do one more lap of this, one more lap of that. Sometimes it’s better just to stick to the plan and do what you know is best. It’s really not a big thing.”
The McLaren drivers believes the team gets relatively more stick for its mistakes than it gets praise for its good performances, but is confident that they can soon implement the necessary mentality changes and fight at the front of the field in an almost “subconscious” way:
“After [Silverstone], it’s not something you’ve got to spend five, six days on or two weeks, whatever it’s been, trying to understand and figure it out. Everyone’s been very up for trying to work on themselves and figure out what they could have done better, me figure out what I could have said and done better.
“I don’t think it’s a super complicated process, but when you’re in the moment of leading a race or you’re second and you have to make these decisions, of course, there’s always a lot more stress and pressure on making the right calls.
“But we’ve done so many good things at the same time, so I think reminding ourselves of the stuff we’ve done well is important. Of course, the times that we’ve messed it up a little bit more, those are the ones everyone remembers, unfortunately, and then attack the team about a little bit more and things like that.
“These are simple things, the things I think we know and we understand, but implementing that and actually making it a routine and a subconscious thing and something we can just execute in the race is probably the harder part of it. I’m confident we can figure it out.”
