Norris exclusive: Why he's 'not as on it' in 2025

Lando Norris admits he is "not as on it" as he was in Formula 1 last year, as he struggles to drive McLaren's 2025 car without thinking too much and costing himself laptime.

Off the back of winning the 2024 constructors' championship, McLaren has started 2025 with the quickest car on the F1 grid and taken victory in four of the five grands prix held so far - but only one of those victories has gone to Norris.

In a special episode of The Race F1 Podcast, filmed and recorded at McLaren's F1 headquarters ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, Norris opened up to host Edd Straw on how the fine margins at the front of F1 now mean drivers need to take extra risk - and how that "complicated" process in a car he's not comfortable driving is leading to unforced errors.

"This year, it's just been tiny things and honestly, it's very hard to put it into the layman's terms of, 'I'm struggling with this or that' - it's just the underlying feeling that I've had with this car, things just aren't flowing as naturally," Norris explained.

"And when you have to drive in a manner which is a little less natural - even if you're trying hard to adapt to different scenarios and a different way of driving - as soon as you have to maybe think in a slightly different way, that can cost you two hundredths, three hundredths, four hundredths. 

"And when you're compromising things by two, three, four hundredths, that can be the difference between being on pole or third.

"I'm not able to get the most out of the car as I would like. It's complicated, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that people just have no clue about and don't get to see."

But what the world does get to see is those problems manifested on track. Norris crashing out of Q3 in Saudi Arabia, when he looked to be favourite to take pole, is the clearest example so far.

Norris admits judging that fine margin of when to push for the final bit of laptime in qualifying and when to hold back is the biggest challenge he's facing with a car that doesn't feel natural to him.

"Especially when you're going up against Max [Verstappen], when you're going up against Oscar [Piastri], when you're going up against George [Russell], Charles [Leclerc] - these are all guys trying to do a similar thing," Norris added. 

"And you can't afford to leave one hundredth, two hundredths, three hundredths on the table. So you're having to push it to that limit, and when you want to be able to push it to the limit, you've got to feel every step of the way: you've got to feel you're on the limit of the braking, the turn-in phase, the cornering phase, and the exit. 

"And as soon as you have a little bit of a mismatch and things aren't reacting as you think they should, and you're not able to predict the understeer or the oversteer, you're having to think. And as soon as you have to consciously think, you're losing hundredths of a second or thousandths of a second."

This description tallies with something McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said during the Jeddah weekend, admitting the 2025 McLaren doesn't respond as its drivers expect it to when pushed to the limit.

"The harder it gets, the more precision you need," Norris said. "The more precision you need, the more on top of the car you've got to feel. 

"And that's an area that I felt I was very good at the end of last season and really understood. And I'm not able to be as on it as I was at the end of last year. 

"And therefore I pay the price, in either some big mistakes or some lock-ups or different things; I'm not able to be as precise as I need to be, and that's costing me."

Norris says it's been "a great year, but also a difficult start to the season, because things just aren't flowing as easily as I would like" and so he's used the two-week gap between Jeddah and Miami to try to "refresh, try and understand, try and improve" his understanding of the car.

And he's also feeling some extra energy from the fact F1 is about to return to the scene of his breakthrough F1 victory in 2024.

"It's on May 4 this year, so it's not quite the one-year anniversary, but it's kind of the kickstart moment of what went on to be a very great and memorable and historic season for us as a team," Norris said.

"It's nice to go back to a track that I performed well at, got good memories at, but off of a bit of a refresh and a bit of a time to go over things and make sure I come back stronger."