Pressure has never been greater for Lando Norris after losing title lead
FINAL CORNER, CHEQUERED FLAG: It's time for Lando Norris to respond to his critics
Lando Norris returns to the scene of his maiden F1 race victory for the first time when everyone rocks up at Miami this weekend.
But the Briton is going into this crucial race on the backfoot, and at the lowest point of his entire tenure in the sport. While he sits second in the championship, his position within the team is now under serious threat. It’s a new dynamic for Norris, with younger teammate Oscar Piastri taking the lead in the standings ahead of him with victory in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago.
The Australian is a contrasting personality to Norris, often coming across as very cool under pressure while his more experienced rival has earned a reputation for being too emotional. Both approaches have their merits, and obviously work for either driver — they wouldn’t have made it this far if it didn’t — but the perception of Norris is coming back to bite him amid these costly errors.
I wrote about the importance of mistakes in my last newsletter, and it was Piastri who actually struck first blood in that regard back in Australia. The 24-year-old spun late on from second — in very tricky conditions! — and could only salvage ninth to lose a ton of ground early on in the championship.
But Norris has left the door wide open for Piastri to come back at him, while also keeping Max Verstappen within touching distance, with a poor sprint race in China, as well as qualifying errors in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The consistency of these mistakes is beginning to pile up, and they’re even getting worse and worse, with his big shunt in Jeddah wrecking the car in a major way.
It would be easy to point to Norris’ reputation and suggest he’s cracking under the pressure, but that’s not quite the whole picture. The pressure is no doubt adding to his issues, but he’s made clear that the car is also proving tricky to handle this year. He’s never had the best car in his F1 career to start a season before, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be it seems.
He opened up on those struggles ahead of his return to Miami this weekend, making it clear that these small adjustments that need to be made are costing him lap time, which is naturally going to lead to more errors.
"This year, it's just been tiny things and honestly, it's very hard to put it into the layman's terms of, 'I'm struggling with this or that' — it's just the underlying feeling that I've had with this car, things just aren't flowing as naturally," said Norris.1
"And when you have to drive in a manner which is a little less natural — even if you're trying hard to adapt to different scenarios and a different way of driving — as soon as you have to maybe think in a slightly different way, that can cost you two hundredths, three hundredths, four hundredths.
"And when you're compromising things by two, three, four hundredths, that can be the difference between being on pole or third. I'm not able to get the most out of the car as I would like. It's complicated, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that people just have no clue about and don't get to see."
It only ramps up the pressure when Norris struggles with the car and it’s his teammate that’s succeeding in his place.
Curiously, McLaren CEO this week also tried to downplay any concerns about Norris and Piastri’s growing rivalry coming to a head in dramatic fashion. Competitive teammates clash on track, that’s the nature of F1 and it’s happened through so many eras, from Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
But the chief executive has claimed the team are ready for an incident between the two, claiming they’ve discussed the inevitability and he’s confident they’ll be able to shake hands and move on, if and when the time comes.
"I know everyone's kind of waiting for the moment [and] I think that moment will come when they're racing each other very hard and somebody gets it a little bit wrong," said Brown.2
"But I'm not worried about the outcome. Because we've discussed it, we know it's more of a when than an if. Drivers can race each other very hard and very clean, and every once in a while, someone's going to get it wrong. If you have two cars next to each other 24 times a year, it's going to happen.
"But I think we have a relationship with our drivers, and the drivers with each other, that they can have an epic battle on track and shake hands at the end of it, even if it means there's a little tangle in between.”
However, it’s difficult to have the same confidence as McLaren about this issue after seeing how poorly they handled the relationship between the pair on track last year. Incidents in Budapest, Monza and Austin all raised significant questions over their communication and ability to handle two drivers of the same quality. Even in Japan earlier this year, the team opted for a safer strategy while losing the race to Verstappen and Red Bull instead of trying something different that might end up favouring one driver over another.
Miami is the scene of the turning point that won McLaren the constructors’ championship last year, as well as Norris’ big breakthrough as a title contender, but 12 months on and major questions now surround both parties. Talk of an incident between the two title rivals by Brown may prove quite prophetic, and there would certainly be a lot of dramatic irony if it did come this weekend, but Norris simply has to turn around his form before entertaining any thoughts of these two actually racing each other on track.
Prediction corner
F1’s become very unpredictable this year, but I did get my first correct one right last time out when I said McLaren wouldn’t get a 1-2 in Saudi Arabia, making me 1/3 for the year.
I’m going to stick with McLaren again (the fight at the front is just so much fun!) and predict they will win every race between now and the Spain GP, ie in Miami, Imola and Monaco.
Race Rating - Saudi Arabia
This was better than the last two at this venue, but it’s evident this is not a good track for racing. Another lap one turn one issue as well, a corner that needs to be looked at for future races. 2/5.
Driver Power Rankings - Saudi Arabia
Charles Leclerc put in one of the drives of the season so far to take a podium. Meanwhile, Piastri controlled the pace well while under a lot of pressure to earn the win. Bearman had a quiet race but he was phenomenal all weekend, thrashing Esteban Ocon in the other Haas.
Verstappen’s pole was incredible, but another lap one turn one incident took the shine off a solid p2 from him. Carlos Sainz fared better than Alex Albon, as he starts to get to grips with the car now, and played a strong team game to help Williams get double points.
George Russell’s pace was weaker on Sunday than Saturday, and he potentially cooked his tyres at the start of the second stint. Probably maximised his result, but not the cleanest of drives. Fernando Alonso was also fairly quiet in p11 but, similarly to Bearman, he outclassed Lance Stroll in the other car.
Finally, Andrea Antonelli was solid, if unspectacular, and Norris recovered okay to get a potentially valuable result in the championship after Saturday’s crash.
Here is my ranking: 1. Charles Leclerc. 2. Oscar Piastri. 3. Ollie Bearman. 4. Carlos Sainz. 5. Max Verstappen. 6. George Russell. 7. Alex Albon. 8. Fernando Alonso. 9. Andrea Antonelli. 10. Lando Norris.
And here is how this ranking impacts the DPR standings:
Storyline to watch out for - Miami
Cadillac will be showcasing their 2026 car this weekend ahead of their entry into the sport next year. We may even find out who will be driving that car as well, so it’s definitely something to keep an eye out for amid all the excitement of the race itself.