How McLaren's race focus helped Norris to move on from Q3 crash

Inspired by Andrea Stella Norris and his McLaren team quickly turned their attention to Sunday's race

When Lando Norris met the media in Jeddah not long after his heavy Q3 crash he was surprisingly calm and collected, given the obvious blow to his title hopes associated with a P10 start.

If anything he was less stressed that he had been exactly a week earlier in Bahrain, when he made his frustration at qualifying only sixth very obvious.

On this occasion crucially he’d already had an opportunity to speak to his team, and his own subsequent approach mirrored theirs – yes the crash wasn’t ideal, but let’s think about how do we turn this around in Sunday’s race?

It’s a positive approach that has been fostered by team principal and accomplished man manager Andrea Stella.

His engineer’s instincts kicked in - let’s deal with the challenge we now have - while at the same time helping to ensure that Norris himself quickly moved on.

“When you have an incident in qualifying, it's always unfortunate,” said the Italian. “Because like today, Lando could have been the first row, and now we are starting from 10th.

“But these guys are race drivers, they have done this their entire life. I'm sure it's not the only disappointing Saturday that Lando might have had in his career. We are all, drivers included, very thick skinned. Very used to that, very determined.

“In the briefing our focus immediately shifted onto what tyres for tomorrow? How do we try to use the performance that we are showing on Friday?

“It's not only a morale aspect, it's also almost a methodological aspect, like how do I move from this point into good? There's a race tomorrow, let's be programmed, let's go and actually use this disappointment as additional determination.

“That was the conversation in the briefing, if you want. That's the sport. And I think when you are into the sport, when you are the athlete or the engineers, you are well-trained, and sometimes you just have these five minutes of disappointment, and then you know how to convert it. This is what I've seen has happened with Lando and also with the team.”

Asked about his friend’s incident Carlos Sainz suggested that he could bounce back, citing last year’s Brazilian GP – when the fortunes of Norris and Max Verstappen were reversed – as an example of how quickly things can change between a Saturday and Sunday.

When I asked Stella if the circumstances now gave Norris a chance to turn things around on Sunday and show what he’s made of he agreed.

“One hundred per cent,” he said. “After five minutes, Lando was here, back in the office. Immediately, the mindset changed. That's not the position that we want to be in a race in which we could have started from the front row.

“But actually, we take it as an opportunity to show our determination, to show the strength from our attitudinal point of view, in terms of our mindset. This was very much what we talked about in the debrief, post-qualifying and also the genuine attitude that everyone brought into the debriefing and into preparing and positioning the team for having a good race tomorrow.

“I really hope that we will be in condition to have some free laps, free air laps tomorrow, use the pace that we saw on Friday, and this weekend could actually be a weekend from which we come out stronger, reinforced, even more confident, because we see our strengths. And I think this aspect of the qualifying is very episodical.

“We just have to sort of understand how to deal with the fact that perhaps sometimes you just don't have to go for the final few milliseconds until we make the car just more genuine in terms of the cueing and the feedback that the car gives to the drivers, this is 100% responsibility of the team.”

To his credit Stella also suggested that the team takes responsibility for putting Norris in a position where mistakes can happen at the very limit.

That’s an impressive attitude to adopt, especially when your driver hits a low like Lando did on Saturday evening.

Stella explained: “I think in Q3 when Lando tries to squeeze a few more milliseconds out of the car, what we see – and I think we are starting to see this even better in the in the data, like in terms of identification of what is going on – when he tries to squeeze this extra millisecond, just the car doesn't respond as he expects.

“So I think this is a behaviour that kind of surprises him. Today it surprised him. The car understeered a bit in corner four, ended up on the outside kerb, and this outside kerb can be quite unforgiving.

“So in a way, it's almost episodical. What's happening is an episode, and it's an episode that I think starts from some of the work that we have done on the car. It made the car faster overall, but I think it took something away from Lando in terms of predictability of the car once he pushes the car at the limit.

“So it's a responsibility of the team to try and improve the car and to try and correct this behaviour, because we want Lando to be confident, comfortable that he can push the car.

“And when he needs to find a few milliseconds, he can do it with a behaviour of the car that, okay, maybe you realise I pushed a bit too much, but without this sort of macroscopic consequences. So I see very much of a responsibility of the team in terms of improving the situation.”

Stela acknowledged that it might take time to hone the car, and in the interim the key is to ensure that Norris is able to cope as best he can.

“What's important from Lando's side is that in the meantime, while we don't improve it, he maintains the confidence and he maintains an availability to adapt. These cars are so fast, they are so demanding in terms of just adopting a very natural driving style.

“We hear this even from Hamilton, seven times world champion, and yet, he talks about driving the car in a natural way, because these cars are too fast to think. You either kind of get what you anticipate from the car, or you're going to be slow.

“And Lando doesn't accept to be slow. So it's our responsibility to make sure that we give him a car that is at the level of his talent.”