Lando Norris pinpoints exactly where his struggles with the McLaren car are ahead of the F1 2025 Miami GP as he explains he is losing time in the fractional thousandths in Formula 1 qualifying.
The Brit comes into the weekend on the backfoot, having gone without a pole and winless since the season opener. A poor Saturday at the Bahrain GP and a crash at Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah Corniche Circuit also sees him relinquish the championship lead.
Building upon a series of errors throughout the F1 2024 season, question marks have subsequently appeared around whether he can handle the pressure of a title fight as Oscar Piastri seems comfortable in the same MCL39 package.
The Australian has rattled off three wins from the past four weekends and secured two pole positions in the process to assume control of the standings by 10 points as the sport arrives at the Miami International Autodrome.
However, Norris explains that his McLaren struggles are limited to the very fine margins of qualifying as he pinpoints what is costing him time at the F1 2025 Miami GP, held from May 2-4.
“It’s a difficult one to answer. I think there are just certain things which don’t allow me to feel what I need to feel,” Norris told members of the media, including Total-Motorsport.com. “Those things are what allow me to drive to the level that I can drive at, to get pole positions and to drive at the highest level in racing.
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“And we’re talking about small things. It’s not like it’s impossible to drive all of a sudden. It’s just when we’re talking about qualifying split by hundredths of a second, thousandths of a second.
“That’s what I’m complaining about. Nothing more than that. It’s not one I can probably just give a yes-or-no answer to.”
He has a point about how competitive the F1 field is too. Looking at his lowest completed qualifying performance of the season at the Bahrain International Circuit, when he qualified sixth on the grid, he was 0.258 behind George Russell‘s Mercedes on the second row. Around the entire lap, that works out at a loss of 0.017 per corner.
His margin to Red Bull‘s Max Verstappen in Japan was 0.012, representing a minuscule 0.0006 per corner and proving how marginal the room for error is.
Norris not surprised about McLaren struggles and explains why
McLaren came into the 2025 season as the favourites following a fine run of form throughout 2024 and a very impressive testing session in Bahrain, with many expecting Norris’ main rival to come in the form of Ferrari.
However, it actually appears to be the sensitive rear end of the MCL39. So did the 25-year-old predict his struggles when he got a chance to drive the car in the simulator in the build up to the season? And is it a universal problem?
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s very hard to know,” Norris added, of expecting the struggles. “Of course we have the simulator and things and there was nothing that really spoke out that much about it, so the answer is no.
“We knew it would be a step forward, we knew it’d be quicker, but until you really put it on the track, and you drive at different circuits…
“It’s not just at one [circuit type]. There are some circuits I felt better and some circuits I’ve liked the feeling a lot.
“But not enough of an indication for me to kind of prepare probably what I needed to prepare for.”
