How McLaren is mind-managing Norris back to the top of his game

Work for long enough in motor racing and you rack up many hours in airports, where you witness many peculiar scenes.

One that sprang to mind this weekend involved a well-known driver of yore causing a kerfuffle in the security queue because his pot of homeopathic tablets absolutely could not go through the baggage scanner, lest the magnetic fields zap their woo-woo. It was a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of a competitor: for all that Formula 1 is a science-based field in which every parameter of car performance can be measured, understood and optimised, fundamentally that car is being operated by electrical impulses zipping around inside a chemical battery.

The human brain, that is, with all its eccentricities and frailties.

Besides talent and quick reflexes, a racing driver requires faith – in themselves. And this is where science sometimes has to be fuzzy around the edges.

Ever since winning this year’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix from pole position, Lando Norris has struggled to string together a perfect lap in qualifying – and, given the convergence in car performance, small mistakes here and there add up to a disproportionately large effect. Perhaps more significantly, while McLaren is continuing to develop the MCL39 before pivoting completely to its 2026 project, it isn’t going to make fundamental changes. The MCL39’s occasionally snappy behaviour at the limit, and the absence of the usual signals to the driver that the limit is arriving, have come as part of the package that makes it such an effective race car.

So the onus has been on Norris to make what team boss Andrea Stella described as “adaptations”.

“We tried as a group, together with the driver, to use the information we had accrued over some of the last events in terms of when we are not able to find the last one-tenth of a second,” said Stella after Norris annexed pole in Monaco. “And I think the engineers have done a very good job identifying what we should have adapted and Lando did a phenomenal job just doing it.”

Norris embraces team boss Stella after his Monaco GP triumph

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

Between Australia and Monaco, Norris’s grand prix weekends have been characterised by small but costly errors, typically in qualifying, often compounding through a lap as he hustles the car to compensate for earlier mistakes. He has frequently talked – while in a thoroughly downcast mood – about being unable to find his usual rhythm.

At the limit of car performance, so much driver input is instinctive and bound up in muscle memory. When the driver is put in a position where they have to second-guess those ingrained habits and behaviours on the fly, while reacting corner-by-corner on a hot lap, inevitably there is some inertia and they cannot access those peaks in their own performance. They begin to question themselves.

Norris is not alone here. Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time world champion, can now often be found in a state of despondency after a session, unable to account for his shortcomings. Being slow simply doesn’t compute.

The radio traffic during Norris’s qualifying provided a fascinating insight into the preparation he has been undertaking with his engineers in order to dial out the inconsistencies, and make the unpredictable, predictable

Throughout history there have been drivers with superstitions. David Coulthard’s lucky pants for one; Stefano Modena used to drive with one glove inside out. Still others would admit to having to enter the cockpit from one particular side of the car, or it would simply feel wrong.

To an extent, what matters is what works. If a driver really believes that, for instance, their homeopathic tablets are not works of abject quackery and genuinely should not go through the x-ray machine, that belief has power – within the network of electrical connections inside their head.

Building focus based on routines is quite common in elite sports. The rugby player Jonny Wilkinson, for instance, attributed his uncannily accurate place kicking to neuro-linguistic programming techniques that he also used to conquer pre-match anxiety.

There are those who view NLP as a fringe pseudoscience at best but if its practitioners believe it is a major contributing factor to their excellence, who is to say that it is not having some sort of effect?

Hamilton appears to be going through similar struggles to Norris as he adapts to life at Ferrari

Photo by: Ferrari

The radio traffic during Norris’s qualifying provided a fascinating insight into the NLP-type preparation he has been undertaking with his engineers in order to dial out the inconsistencies, and make the unpredictable, predictable. He was given concise feedback lap after lap by his engineers, with constant reference to benchmarks they had set, procedures to be observed, language they had developed to confer meaning.

“Lando, just remember what made that lap so good,” he was told after Q2. “So Turn 3 for approach, Turn 1 braking pressure, and just remember our key objectives. Number 1 is line, number 2 is throttle, number 3 is brake.”

That continued ahead of his crucial lap in Q3: “Opportunity exit, focus, Turn 8. Focus on braking a bit earlier. Opportunity line discipline, Turn 10-11.”

After the race, Norris emphasised how important this process of making 'adaptations' – driving smarter rather than faster, in his words – has been.

“I’ve been working hard over the last few months to get back to having that momentum that I had in Australia, that confidence,” he said. “What I felt this weekend was a small step forward, but it’s not it. It’s not like I’ve nailed it now and everything’s back.

“There are still things that I need to work on. There are still things that, as a team, them giving me the equipment – and I don’t mean just making a quicker car, because the car’s quick enough – but giving me the things I need from the car in order to excel and maximise results, and the differences from last year to this year.

Norris felt his Monaco GP pole and win represented a step forward but wants to consistently be on top before declaring his resurgence

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“So, still things from both sides, but I’m very proud of yesterday. I’m happier with yesterday’s result than I am of today’s. I mean, today is incredible, but I was more emotional yesterday than I was today. That’s how much yesterday meant to me, to kind of get my groove back in qualifying, because it’s something I’ve just had my whole life.

“It’s just always been good, until this year. And I’ve had to work hard to try and get it back.”

Young racing drivers often find themselves at an inflection point in their lives and careers where they realise that raw talent only gets them so far. At the very highest level they enter the territory of marginal gains.

Norris has given up alcohol and parties, but perhaps this remapping of his mental approach will be the most significant of the marginal gains

When Jenson Button arrived in Formula 1 he was feted by tabloids and lads’ magazines and enjoyed that lifestyle while failing to back up the hype with results on track. It was after he took up triathlons and found more discipline that he became a world champion.

This year Norris has given up alcohol and parties, but perhaps the remapping of his mental approach will be the most significant of the marginal gains. We’ll let you know if we spot him holding up the security queue…

Can Norris now follow up his Monaco win in Spain this weekend?

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images