The steps Norris took to reach a new level in F1 2021

Though it’s just a handful of months since GP Racing last sat down to talk to Lando Norris, so much has changed in the interim. Who could have predicted, at the beginning of the season, that Norris’s highly rated new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, a multiple grand prix winner no less, would take so long to master McLaren’s capricious MCL35M – and that it would be Norris, the youngster with the well-documented confidence issues, 
who would lay on the swagger?

With a new technical format beckoning, 2021 was always going to be about making do as teams pivoted development resources early to gain 
an advantage in the era to come. For McLaren’s drivers that meant making the best of a difficult car with a particular set of characteristics that made it a potential winner at some tracks and virtually undriveable at others.

Ricciardo’s journey was the most obviously troubled – as he explained in GP Racing's December issue, 
he had to revise his entire driving style – although 
he delivered a fine victory on one of those good days 
for the MCL35M, at Monza.

PLUS: The humbling changes Ricciardo made to deliver the goods for McLaren in 2021

Had the cards fallen slightly differently that victory might have gone to Norris. Two weeks earlier, in Belgium, he’d looked to be a prime candidate for pole position on a perilously wet Spa-Francorchamps circuit before spinning heavily into the barriers. A fortnight after completing that McLaren 1-2 in Italy, Norris dominated the Russian Grand Prix from pole position and should have won, only to make the wrong call on tyres as conditions changed in the final laps.

Norris, who turned 22 in November, has been unusually open about mental health, as well as being among the more vocally self-critical of the current crop of drivers. But his demeanour seems to have undergone a subtle shift as he’s developed over the season.

He gives the appearance of being more confident than in the past, underlined most graphically in Sochi by his unequivocal “NO!” when race engineer Will Joseph radioed to ask if he felt the time was right to shift from slicks to intermediates. Has he passed a kind of tipping point in his 
personal development, where his speed and racecraft now 
measurably outweigh the nagging doubts?

Norris gives the appearance of being more confident in himself than in his first F1 seasons

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“There’s been many improvements I’ve made this season,” Norris says, “both from my own side, and also with my team, how we’re working, our efficiency and so on. I think that’s better than ever. I guess the racing side is one area I’ve improved a lot this year compared with last season. There’s still areas for me to improve in quali, and the races, but I’m much happier.

“I’m still very self-critical – maybe you don’t always hear it on the radio that much, and maybe I’m not as vocal about not doing well as perhaps Charles [Leclerc] is, for example. But yes, I’m still very critical and hard on myself. Many times even when I’ve done well, I might not necessarily be happy with how I’ve done because I could have done even better.

"I think I’ve just learned more how to turn disappointment into work ethic and trying to work with my team to make it better next time" Lando Norris

“It’s just I don’t do it publicly as much as before, I keep it within the team. And I think I’ve just learned more how to turn disappointment into work ethic and trying to work with my team to make it better next time.”

PLUS: How Norris became more than just McLaren's leader in F1 2021

For McLaren, the focus in 2021 was necessarily on extracting the maximum from its car on the circuits that suit its characteristics. Development was always going to be limited, given the transition to new technical regulations next season. The MCL35M received its last significant upgrade package in Hungary; a handful of subsequent refinements had already been signed off before the summer break.

McLaren hoped to secure third place in the constructors’ championship but, instead, was overhauled by a resurgent Ferrari. The key here is the system of limited development agreed between F1, the teams and the FIA when the regulatory reset was deferred until 2022: McLaren had to spend some of its ‘tokens’ on adapting its chassis to accommodate the Mercedes engine, whereas Ferrari was able to focus its entire allocation on performance improvements.

“Since halfway through the season there’s not been that many changes to the car: what we’ve got is what we got,” says Norris. “There are always some tweaks we can make, and little things we’re still learning, but you still have to drive in quite a specific way and our problems are still the same.”

The MCL35M is slippery in a straight line but tends towards understeer in slow corners, which is why it thrived at venues such as Spa and Monza.

Norris capably backed up Ricciardo to finish second at Monza, but despite the 1-2 McLaren was beaten to third by Ferrari

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“Obviously our focus is on next year from a car development point of view,” continues Norris. “The positives and negatives from how you have to drive the [MCL35M] car are still the same, so that’s why on some tracks we still really struggle, and on others we’re much more competitive. And that’s because of those characteristics. We’re trying to make the most of it.

“For us, it’s not surprising that they’ve been good. They’re Ferrari, right? They’re one of one of the most successful teams in F1 for many reasons. On average, you would still say Ferrari have had a more competitive car from start to finish this year.

“We worked hard to develop our car in the beginning, and little bits here and there, but we knew that next season [with new regulations], we have a big opportunity to make that next step. We committed to doing that and there was no half-heartedness or anything, we knew 
it might make the end of the year a bit tougher, and that’s been about right.”

PLUS: How Ferrari triumphed in the battle for F1 2021's best of the rest

Certainly, the final triple-header of Mexico-Brazil-Qatar was particularly bruising – McLaren banked just four points and slipped to fourth – but it was in the Belgium-Holland-Italy triple-header where Norris demonstrated the qualities which arguably defined his season and underlined his burgeoning status within F1. He’d already signalled the progress he’d been making in the art of qualifying in Monaco and Austria, where he set lap times within half a tenth of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull-Honda – in the latter case to the absolute bafflement of Ricciardo.

Granted, at Spa the outcome was a hard shunt into the wall at Raidillon, bringing out the red flags in Q3 and – given what eventuated on Sunday – scuppering not just a potential pole position, given Lando’s pace until that point, but also a possible race win. What’s significant is not just his speed on that day, making the most of the MCL35M’s performance envelope in tricky conditions, but also his response to the setback.

“Spa was the biggest crash I’ve had in F1,” says Norris. “Just that in itself is a bit of a shock – the size of it, the speed and everything. I felt bad at the time because you never want to do that kind of thing.

“But I don’t think I can apologise for my efforts or for what I was trying to achieve. I was P1 in Q1 and Q2. I was there for a reason, because I was finding the limits, but I wouldn’t say my crash in Q3 was because I was massively pushing the limits – I knew it was going to stop raining.

Norris shunted heavily at Spa while going for pole that would have become a de-facto win, but doesn't regret his efforts in finding the limits

Photo by: Jerry Andre / Motorsport Images

“I knew the track would be getting a lot quicker, so I didn’t try and go out and do the best lap of my life in Q3 run one. I knew Q3 run two would be where the opportunity was. It’s simply that I hit the puddle and a bit of the white line and this bump just a little bit wrong, a little bit too much speed, and that was it. But if you’d said, “Q3 run one, you’ve got one lap, go out and do it,” I would probably have tried to go through much quicker than I did.

“So I didn’t feel like I’d taken any unnecessary risks at all. The problem was aquaplaning – these cars are terrible in the heavy rain. George [Russell] almost had a massive crash as well, he aquaplaned all the way down the Kemmel Straight just ahead of me.

"I apologise that I crashed the car, but I don’t apologise for 
my efforts, my mentality, my decision-making or anything like that, because so far that’s what has helped me and put me in the positions
we’ve been in a lot of times" Lando Norris

“If I hadn’t crashed, someone else would have done. It was just a shame it was me. I apologise that I crashed the car, but I don’t apologise for 
my efforts, my mentality, my decision-making or anything like that, because so far that’s what has helped me and put me in the positions
we’ve been in a lot of times.”

This is a very different Norris from the one who spent his first two seasons in F1 quietly fretting that he might not have what it takes to fight with the occupants of the top drawer. It’s a Norris who is ready and able to do exactly that – backed by a team long absent from the winners’ circle, but which is learning how to win again.

PLUS: Ranking the top 10 Formula 1 drivers of 2021

Ricciardo’s expertly managed victory in Monza made him the first McLaren driver to step atop an F1 podium since Jenson Button at the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix (a week and a half after Lando’s 13th birthday). The team’s form since then has been largely woeful. Personnel and leaders have come and gone, and the McLaren of today is a very different organisation, one finding its way back towards emulating past glories rather than being burdened by the expectations of them.

This would become obvious in Russia, where team and driver in effect tripped over each other after an otherwise impressive performance. Norris qualified on pole, was unfazed when Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz outdragged him to Turn 2 – always a possibility at this track – then bided his time before striking back decisively ahead of the first round of pitstops.

“It was something I knew instinctively,” says Norris. “We’d discussed it: What happens if this is the scenario? What happens if I end up even further back than second? We’d planned for as many scenarios as possible, but you’ve got to have the right mentality in every one of these different situations. When I dropped back to P2 it was sort of inevitable – I don’t think there’s been that many times in Sochi when pole position has led 
out of Turn 2, so it wasn’t like I was worried or shocked or didn’t know what to do from then on.

Norris battled past Sainz and had Hamilton covered before Sochi rain hit, thwarting a likely first win

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“We had a very good plan, it was just a question of lifespan [of the tyres], what’s the stop lap we have to get to, will I be able to pass him or not, and so on. It didn’t worry me. I was waiting for that situation; I was ready to
 be in whatever position I was in for that whole race.

“Even with the fact of Lewis being in the position he was, and [Valtteri] Bottas and Max, knowing how much to push in the middle phase of the race, how much to save for the end of the race, things like that were all
taken into account. There were so many things we
did well that weekend, just that one thing went 
wrong and took it all away. But many decisions
we made were very good.”

Having passed Sainz, Norris controlled the race until the rain set in during the closing laps, gradually at first and then in earnest. Both Norris and his pursuer, Lewis Hamilton, pushed back against team calls to pit for intermediate tyres, but Hamilton acquiesced after Mercedes upgraded its request to an order, based on expectation of heavier rain to come. When that arrived,
a disconsolate Norris slithered down to seventh at the chequered flag.

Naturally attention turned to the quality of McLaren’s decision-making, though this might be a little unfair. While Mercedes seemed to have a key piece of information the McLaren pitwall didn’t – that the rain would intensify – it was also able to pit Bottas first and evaluate the intermediate tyre option. Since Bottas was running outside the points, there was no downside. McLaren couldn’t do that with its other driver since Ricciardo was in the top six.

Despite the mitigating circumstances, Norris was obviously disappointed. This was not an opportunist victory lost but one which had been well earned. Hamilton, significantly, recognised this and commiserated with Norris. As a more experienced driver, and one who regularly interrogates his team’s strategic calls, Hamilton openly acknowledged that on this occasion he had been wrong and his team had made the right decision.

“It didn’t change the outcome,” says Norris, “and I still wasn’t happy but it was good to know that we had the same mentality at that point – we both were thinking ‘these tyres are OK’. And I still stand by it. From what I knew – because I didn’t know it was going to rain any harder – it was the right decision [to stay out] and if it hadn’t rained any harder I would have won the race.

“Slicks would have been good enough to be ahead of Lewis after he boxed onto inters, and he probably would have stayed out as well if it wasn’t going to rain more, but he got that bit of information from the team that it was going to rain more, and that proved to be key.

Norris had to give best to Hamilton, as McLaren lacked the crucial information Mercedes had that more rain was due

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

“It meant a lot to hear that from him, not so much as a seven-time world champion, but as someone 
who has been through situations like that before – and the kind of guy that he is, to say what he did to
me and to be supportive. It didn’t rid me of the frustration but it definitely helped.

“The time spent on reviews was very good. And it wasn’t just one thing, there were a couple of little things which added up to the eventual decision. Things I said, or the way I said them, had changed things a little bit, and the pace that I had as well, that influenced our decisions.
 So it wasn’t simple.

"One thing that’s changed is my confidence level. I feel like I’ll be able to deal with it better when I’m leading a race. I know where we deserve to be if we take our time to try and make further improvements" Lando Norris

“Our strategy team is one of the best 
in F1 and they made that decision because that’s what they believed was correct at the time. Of course, in hindsight 
it was a mistake, but we learned a lot in the review which we were able to put into practice in the following races.”

It was the American football coach Vince Lombardi who coined the famous phrase “winning is a habit”. Another apt aphorism which sprung from his pen should resonate with Norris and McLaren: “Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time.”

That must be the long-term goal for this upwardly mobile team and driver. Both have shown the capacity to win and the ability to learn from mistakes. Much will depend on how strong McLaren’s 2022 car is relative to the competition, although for now that remains unknown. But in terms of controlling what can be controlled, Norris thinks he’s in the right place.

“One thing that’s changed is my confidence level,” he says. “I feel like I’ll be able to deal with it better when I’m leading a race. I know where we deserve to be if we take our time to try and make further improvements, to get to that position of winning races. And I’m ready to be in those positions more often.”

Norris has emerged as a bone fide team leader at McLaren and believes his experiences in 2021 will prepare him better for leading races

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images