Lando Norris feels his own efforts deserve a little more credited compared to McLaren’s new suspension after a recent upturn in form.
Norris has wrestled himself firmly back into the World Championship picture against team-mate Oscar Piastri, his back-to-back wins at the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone reducing the gap to eight points, though he feels people are talking too much about the new McLaren suspension and how that may be helping his cause.
Lando Norris recovery: Driver or car the main protagonist?
McLaren made a new MCL39 front suspension available for the Canadian Grand Prix, but thus far, only Norris has opted to take it, with Piastri sticking to the old specification, having established himself as the favourite for the F1 2025 Drivers’ title.
But, momentum has since swung. While Norris’ Canadian GP ended in disaster after he clattered the rear of Piastri’s car and then the wall, Norris had been looking strong, on the attack against his team-mate. He followed that up with victories in Austria and Britain, as Piastri completed one-two results for McLaren.
Norris’ improvement since using the suspension upgrade strongly points towards it having a positive effect on his performance, but Norris wants more credit for his own efforts to turn his season and title challenge around.
The McLaren cars will be further tweaked in time for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, with a new floor set to be bolted on.
Asked about the suspension upgrade after winning the British Grand Prix – his first home race victory – Norris said: “It could be worse. It could have made it… people talk about it probably too much. That’s just my honest opinion.
“It could be that it’s helping me, and when I say helping, it’s helping me by hundredths, thousandths, I don’t know. It’s impossible to numerically put a number on it.
“Like I said in previous interviews, it’s something the team believed might give me more feeling, and I just roll with that. I believe. My faith in the team and my belief in them thinking this might help. Not a guarantee, but it might. And that’s it.
“Yes, I won two races since. I was real quick in Canada. I’m not going to say it’s down to that, obviously. I want to put more of it down to my hard work, my work I’ve been doing away from the track, with my team, with many people that I have around me. I put it way more down to that than some alterations on the suspension.
“At the same time, I could just say I think I could have achieved the same thing without it and just going back to our previous spec. So, I don’t know. Hopefully, one day we get to back-to-back test it and I might get a feeling, I might not.
“My feelings have been good over the last few races, but I think more of that’s come from just my working on trying to get better feelings and maximising lack of feelings in certain areas more than it has been by so many improvements from a car point of view.
“But we’ve improved the car. We’ve had upgrades last weekend, things like that, and that helps. We won by what, 30 seconds here. We won by 20 seconds last weekend, so the car’s pretty damn good. I want to put it more down to my hard work rather than that, but it’s a combination of both.”
Latest F1 2025 head-to-head standings from PlanetF1.com
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates
👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates
This weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix sees the return of the F1 Sprint format, but while that means practice is reduced to just one hour, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said the FP1 tests with a new floor at Silverstone were enough to warrant its competitive introduction at Spa-Francorchamps.
Asked by Sky F1 at Silverstone for his Belgian GP expectations, Brown said: “Kind of more of the same. Maybe not a 32-second win, but more of the same, as far as how close it is, right?
“This was a unique race because of the situation.
“The floor worked well, so we’ll be unwrapping that and throwing that on both cars. It was always intended to just be a test part this weekend, but we were happy with what we saw. So more to come.
“But I think all these races have been epic, even though the numbers are, what is it? Nine [wins] out of 12. Every race is pretty high stressful, so as long as they are great to watch on TV, I hope we do another nine out of 12. But it’s an exciting season.”
McLaren has built what looks like an unassailable Constructors’ Championship lead, the gap to P2 Ferrari 238 points, while Piastri is 69 points clear of the highest-ranked non-McLaren driver, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
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