Once again, Lando Norris has to criticize himself: For some reason, the decisive qualifying lap just doesn’t work for him
There he is again, the self-critical Lando Norris. But this time, the McLaren driver has every reason to be. While his teammate and championship leader Oscar Piastri secured his third pole position in a row after his three wins in Imola, Norris had to settle for fourth place behind Max Verstappen and George Russell.
And once again, he blamed himself: “The car is mega. It’s on pole and it’s the best car on the track. It just wasn’t me,” he lamented.
He was 0.292 seconds off the pace in the end, but what particularly bothered him was that while his rivals were able to improve in the final Q3 run, he was unable to do so – once again. Instead, he was more than six-tenths of a second off the front in his second attempt.
“My last lap in qualifying is never good enough. Everyone gets faster—I just get slower. It’s just not good enough,” he shakes his head.
He said he made “a lot of mistakes.” Team boss Andrea Stella: “Lando lost time over several corners, not just in one place. We know that Lando doesn’t yet have the perfect feeling in the MCL39 when it comes to squeezing out the last tenth. We’re working on that, and I’m sure it will improve.”
He doesn’t want to overestimate the result. “Now the focus is back on Lando because he’s fourth, but who was it in the last race? It was Oscar, but I don’t think we talked about it much – and in the end, he won the race. We have the same mindset with Lando today.”
Great strength becomes great weakness
But Norris himself is also wondering why things aren’t working out: “I honestly don’t know,” he puzzles. “I’m not going to just blame the car – that’s not me. I felt good all weekend. The feeling was good in Q1 and Q2 too. I felt like there was still lap time in there. But when I try to get it out, it just doesn’t work.”
Focused on giving it everything on Sunday McLaren ImolaGP pic. twitter.com/bGnfpICZG5
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) May 17, 2025
That has changed compared to last year. “Last year, this was my biggest… So, throughout the year, qualifying was my biggest strength. This year, it’s just not working,” he says.
“We understand some of the reasons why. Obviously, I’m not happy with it – I want to fight for pole. But at the moment, it’s just not working as it should. I’m working hard, and so is the team. These are difficult moments, but that’s just how it is at the moment.”
Victory out of reach
This also means that he is once again in danger of losing valuable ground in the championship battle, because his main rival Piastri is starting from the front again and Norris has already written off victory as ”rather unlikely.”
“Overtaking is almost impossible here,“ he knows. ‘But maybe we have a good chance with the strategy. I have to hope that the other guys’ tires wear out quickly. Maybe we can do better as a team than the others. Then there might be opportunities for overcuts or undercuts against the guys in front of me.”
However, there are many question marks in this regard: “We haven’t done many long runs yet. We haven’t used the hard tires at all. There are many unanswered questions. But of course, as always, I will give everything to fight my way to the front in the race.”
According to him, the biggest opportunity lies in the start. But: “It’s not easy to make up more than one place at the start here. It’s very tight, and I’m up against people who take a lot of risks. The season is long – I have to weigh things up carefully,” he says.
