With the victory last weekend in Austria under his belt, Lando Norris has traveled to his home race in Silverstone with confidence. Little by little, the Brit is finding his good feeling back in his McLaren, after an adjustment to the car.
After the start of the season, McLaren confirmed that Norris was missing feel in the front wheels and steering of the dominant car in 2025, while teammate Oscar Piastri clearly didn’t suffer from this.
McLaren worked on a solution. Since Canada, the front suspension on Norris’ car has been slightly adjusted.
“I can’t even say definitively whether it has really improved, the change we’re talking about here is so small,” Norris explained on Thursday at Silverstone. “The car itself doesn’t get any faster, but it does change the feel through the steering wheel and the front suspension.”
Norris had and still has difficulty making it clear to his team exactly what feeling he is missing. “But I just have to trust the people who adjusted it. They think it’s better, so I trust that. And in Austria I also felt that it was better. It’s just not the feeling that I had in the car last year.”
‘Never want to blame the car’
The number two in the World Championship standings finds it difficult to pay too much attention to his possible problems with the car.
“That’s just the way I am, I never really want to blame the car. But I’m working hard on this, I also have to use my experience here. I’m glad I brought it up and that we looked at improvements together. I feel comfortable now, but not completely comfortable. It’s also difficult to compare, because I’ve only driven McLarens so far.”
The difference between Piastri and Norris is also caused by the different ways in which the drivers feel what is happening with the car and what needs to be done.
“For me, most of the feeling comes through my hands. With that I feel where the grip is on the track, much more than the teammates I’ve had so far. I think this is my strength. But if the feeling isn’t there to get everything out of the car, it quickly becomes less comfortable.”
Touching each other is the red line
Norris is fifteen points behind Piastri in the World Championship standings. In Austria he fought fierce duels with his teammate, which was also the case in Canada. McLaren largely lets the drivers fight it out themselves, although according to Norris there is a clear red line.
“That red line is not touching each other, it’s that simple. So what I did in Canada went over the red line,” Norris laughed. In the final phase of the Canadian Grand Prix, he drove into the back of teammate Piastri.
“Sometimes we get the order to hold our positions, but like last week we were really allowed to fight it out ourselves. That’s clear to us. You can do what you want, have fun. Although there are of course people who build our cars, so we have to make it to the finish. We mustn’t do stupid things, like I did in Canada.”