“I do not feel the car like last year.” Norris explained in detail the decline of the form

Lando Norris acknowledges that he is “not at the level” that last year, because it is difficult for him to manage the cars of Mclarene of the 2025 season, without thinking too much or wasting time in circles.

After winning the championship among the designers in 2024, McLaren started 2025 with the fastest car on the starting grille of Formula-1 and won in four of the five of the five Grand Prix, held at the moment. However, only one of these victories went to Norris.

In the special episode of The Race F1 PodCast, recorded in the headquarters of McLaren on the eve of the Grand Prix Miami, Norris told the leading Edda Stroke about how small problems with the front of the booft force pilots to take an additional risk-and how this “complex” is a “difficult”.

This year, it comes to the smallest things, and honestly, it is very difficult to explain it in a simple language: “I fight with one or the other” – it is rather a general feeling that I have with this car when everything is not natural, – Norris explained.

And when you have to go less naturally-even trying to adapt to different scenarios and change the style of driving-as soon as you have to think a little differently, it can cost you two or three or four hundred seconds.

And two to three or four hundredths can be a difference between the pole and the third place.

I can’t use the car as much as I would like. It is difficult – much happens behind the scenes, which people simply do not see or realize.

But what is visible to everyone is the consequences of these problems. The most striking example is Norris’s departure in the third segment in Saudi Arabia, when he looked like a favorite for pool.

Norris acknowledges that the biggest problem in a car that does not seem natural to him is to determine the moment when the last circle in qualification should be risking, and when it is to hold back.

Especially when you compete with Max [Ферстаппеном]Oscar [Піастрі]George [Расселом]Charles [Леклерком] “They all try to do the same,” Norris added.

You can’t afford to leave one, two or three hundredths on the table. So you need to bring everything to the limit. And to do this, you need to feel every step: the braking limit, the phase of entry into the turn, the phase of the turn and the exit from it.

If there is even a slight discrepancy if the machine does not respond as you expect and you cannot predict insufficient or excessive rotation, you have to think. And as soon as you need to think consciously, you lose a hundredth or thousandths of a second.

This is consistent with the fact that the head of the team of Andrea Stella during the weekend in Jedda: Mclarene in 2025 does not always respond as the riders expect when they try to squeeze the maximum.

The harder it becomes, the greater the accuracy is required, – said Norris.

And the more accuracy, the better you have to feel the car. And this is what I got very well at the end of last season. I really understood everything that happened. Now I can’t be as accurate as it is then.

Therefore, I cry for this – either big mistakes, wheel blocks or other little things; I cannot be as accurate as it should, and it is expensive me.

Norris added that despite the fact that the year is generally wonderful, the beginning of the season was difficult, because everything is not as easy as it would like. That is why he used a two -week break between Jedda and Miami to “restart, to better understand the situation and improve” the feeling of a car.

He also receives additional energy from formula-1 return to the route, where he won his first victory a year ago.

This year it will be May 4, so it is not quite an anniversary, but still a symbolic start of an extraordinary, memorable and historical season for us as a team, – said Norris.