Formula 1 points leader Lando Norris says he needs to improve aspects of his mentality after the toughest weekend of his 2025 season so far.
Norris finished third in Bahrain but did so via a tricky qualifying that left him sixth, a penalty for being out of position on the grid, and a stumbling recovery that included being outfoxed by George Russell's Mercedes at the end of the race, all while team-mate Oscar Piastri stormed to a dominant victory.
Norris is still leading the championship for the first time in his F1 career, but he is struggling to adapt to the McLaren MCL39, without the confidence that carried him to generally being McLaren's stronger driver in 2024.
He detailed on Sunday night in Bahrain how McLaren's 2025 car advantage is bailing him out as he's "nowhere near the capability that I have" right now.
What Norris is struggling with is a physical adaptation to this car, but how he reacts to that struggle is equally important.
It's raised questions once more about his mentality, which was scrutinised last year when he was unable to mount a serious, sustained title challenge against Max Verstappen despite the McLaren developing into a car capable of one.
Norris said he knows his mentality isn't perfect and detailed an area of improvement ahead of this weekend's Saudi Arabian GP.
"It's a balance, I think I'm clearly still trying to improve on," Norris explained on Thursday.
"Such as this week, trying to remind myself of the good things. I do think of the bad stuff, the negative things, more than I think of the positives.
"I have to get reminded that I'm leading the championship and that I won the first race and things like that, and I've been on the podium every race. I have to get reminded of them rather than just being able to remind myself.
"It's also because I want to do well, and I want to get the most out of every session, I want to achieve my potential. At the moment, I'm just not achieving my potential and there's no reason for me to be happy with that.
"I know I'm hard and I know I'm tough on myself, but for 95% of it, I think it's a good thing. I think it's what makes me who I am and makes me have a chance in Formula 1 and be with McLaren and be fighting for a world championship.
"I accept that there's probably the last few percent which can be a very important few percent where I probably say too many negatives and that gets into my own head and I don't think of the positives as much as I should.
"If I did ask or tell myself at the beginning of the year I could be leading the championship after four races, I would probably be very happy.
"There's a lot of things that I would be so happy about: starting the season off with how the first race of the year in Australia went and achieving the podiums, turning a bad weekend [around] and still having a podium.
"I probably just don't remind myself enough of them and that's probably something, the main area I would say that I need to improve on."
Norris spent three days between Bahrain and Jeddah "relaxing" as he "needed a reset", although he admitted: "As with every athlete's mind and every driver's mind, as much as you try and get away, you're still thinking of a lot of things. So for a lot of my time, I was still thinking of the difficulties that I've been struggling with."
Does Norris have the mentality to be champion?
The question of Norris's mentality was discussed on the latest episode of The Race F1 Podcast with The Race Members' Club asking questions about Norris versus Piastri.
"It has to be a concern for his title prospects; mental resilience is part of what makes a champion, and he handles it differently from probably any other top driver I've seen, although a little like James Hunt, who could also get a bit neurotic," Mark Hughes said of Norris.
"Lando uses his self criticism almost as a motivation, like, 'Come on you muppet' - he’s talking to a second person, saying it out-loud for the world to hear.
"He says it works for him and generally it's a waste of time trying to be like someone else. You can focus on improving aspects of your own game and he's quite capable of that but you can't be like someone else, you can only be who you are, your core, and you can learn to acquire a greater understanding but you can't fundamentally change how you're wired up.
"In a high-stress activity like motor racing, that call will always be from the centre. He can't suddenly be Max Verstappen or Oscar Piastri, he has to find a way that works for him.
"That might be unlocked by changes made to the car or a new understanding which allows him to go back to driving in a natural flow, and then the confidence spirals upwards and he becomes incredibly difficult to beat.
"I'd say all routes are open at this early stage of the season. While I see him as more vulnerable to his make-up than Piastri is, I don't see that as something that debars him from winning a title.
"It's still all there in front of him if he can find his own way through this semi-crisis."
Ben Anderson felt Norris had shown great mental growth since his rookie season in 2019.
"It's fair to say when he was new in Formula 1 he did lack maturity and he did lack mental strength, he admitted it himself, he didn't feel like he belonged, he did seem to my mind a step behind people like George Russell who came up at the same time, in terms of having that authority within himself or that calmness like, 'I deserve to be here, I know to handle myself, I know what I want'," Anderson said.
"But I feel like he's kind of grown into his own skin since then. So I don't think that because he looks like he's in his feelings, he's very excoriating of himself publicly. That means, therefore, he's falling apart.
"You don't see a pattern in the driving where he berates himself horrendously, calls himself a muppet then next session is terrible and next race is terrible and you get this kind of run of where is Lando? Even Bahrain, he messes up in Turn 1 in Q3, qualifies further down than he should. But in the race he's quite good - small mistake, lines up in wrong place, but the race through is quite strong, you don't look at that race and go, 'That's it, the qualifying defeat has completely had him over and he's done'.
"So there is mental resilience there and we've talked before about how he's improved through the end of 2024 when he was fighting against Max for the first time. He was making mistakes, getting found out, but then he was working on those things, trying to come back better.
"I can't think that we can extrapolate now, that because Norris has had a rough start, he's not so comfortable in the car that suddenly his mentality is shot because he's berating himself for not doing a better job.
"It would only take a small thing and he might suddenly hit the sort of form you saw in Singapore last year, where he's untouchable.
"So much is about how you feel in the car. I feel like Norris has always been quite uncomfortable in this run of McLarens. He hasn't been able to drive it the way he wants, he’s consistently having to adapt and find a different way, adopt different techniques that aren't natural to him.
"And it's always the crucial equation, trying to keep all the things you're naturally good at and use them when they're needed while taking on these other things that don't come as naturally and absorbing them and I just think we've started the season in a place where what Norris does naturally isn’t quite working as well."
The Piastri contrast
One thing counting against Norris is how mentally a strong a team-mate he has in Piastri.
As McLaren team principal Andrea Stella put it in Bahrain: "There's no noise in Oscar's head, which is a very useful characteristic in Formula 1, and I think this allows him to progress, to process information, to process what's available in the situations as a way of improving himself at a very fast rate."
So could Piastri's "robust" mentality be a deciding factor in the title race should it become an intra-McLaren battle?
"Piastri certainly seems to be very clam, no noise in his brain at Stella said, not distracted, very process-focused," Edd Straw said.
"He doesn’t get too overexcited when things are going well, doesn't get despondent when things aren't going well, or at least he doesn't appear to because you never know what's going on in someone's head. There could be turmoil in there but everything indicates there isn't it.
"I'd say if you are applying the classical mindset of a champion driver then Piastri appears to fit that much better.
"We should say though he's never been tested in a proper world championship fight, it's starting this year but as it goes on it will get more and more intense and that will be uncharted territory for him.
"Even if he's super robust as he appears to be, everyone has their point where they start to unravel a little bit. Even the established proven greats do that.
"But I would say on the balance of probability, Piastri's mindset and strength could be a deciding factor in the championship but sometimes you've got to let it play out.
"If I was to choose to be a driver in that situation, I'd want to be the one with Piastri's mentality."
