Norris can’t afford to read headlines about another below par Saturday

The struggles of Lando Norris in qualifying this year have been well documented, and the McLaren man has been very honest about not feeling at one with the MCL39.

In Monaco a below par Saturday could be particularly costly in the title battle, even allowing for the new two-stop tyre regs meaning that pole is not necessarily a guarantee of victory.

Norris has been trying hard with his engineers to get to the bottom of his problems, but team mate Oscar Piastri has generally (but not always) had the edge over one lap in 2025.

“I’m confident I have the speed,” Norris said on Thursday. “But it’s true that this year I’ve not been able to put things together as well as what I have done in the past, for many, many years.

“So it’s always something I’ve been very at one with, and very – I wouldn’t always say, confident – but something I’ve always just been very, very strong in. And I’ve just not done well enough this season.

“So it’s not like I’m doing a bad job, but when you’re against the best in the world, not doing a perfect job, is also the definition of probably doing a bad job.

“I’m focusing on and I’m working with my team when I’m back home, or when I’m here at the track, on improving these things, because it’s been my biggest let down so far of my season.”

Norris has no issues with his race performance this season, although Piastri is ahead in the points after his string of victories.

“My races on Sunday have been very strong,” he said. “Maybe not every one, but my decision making, so my Sundays I don’t even need to think about. I’m very happy with them.

“My opportunity is on Saturday. So I know what I need to focus on, but like I said before, and I’ve said the last few weeks, it still takes time.

“It takes work from both halves, both from me as a driver, and people I work with, and also as a team, providing me the equipment, the feelings that I need to perform at the level that I did last season.

“I think the level I performed at last season is a level that will have got me a lot more poles this year. So I’ve got it. I know that is there somewhere, but unlocking it just takes work and time.”

Just how long it might take remains a grey area – and the clock is ticking.

“It could be days, or it could be months,” he said. “But I’d say weeks, weeks still is probably the best way of saying it. It could be a matter of months.

“It’s a constant thing that we’re looking into, and trying different things, and from those different things that we try, we get different answers, and that might lead us to more stuff. So, yeah, it could be weeks. It could be still a couple months.”

Meanwhile Norris is sceptical about Max Verstappen’s efforts to downplay Red Bull’s potential form in Monaco.

The Dutchman has been cast as the plucky underdog in 2025, and Norris doesn’t see it that way.

“They won last weekend, they’ve been pole several times this season,” he said. “Max has won several races, he should have won Saudi.

“There’s also slow speed corners in Imola, where they were very strong. So I think we have more of the facts than I think what people on the outside do. There’s a lot of negative stuff about how bad their car is, but they’re very quick.

“We’ve said that the whole season. Outside people have underestimated them, but we know that they’re a threat, they have been the whole year. They will continue to be, especially when you have a team that has won many World Championships, especially in the last 5-10 years.

“And they have Max. And I don’t think you can ever doubt them. They won last weekend because they deserved it. They were good in slow-speed, they were good in high-speed, and they have a good car, but like we saw between Miami and Imola for ourselves, we can look like heroes one weekend and then we get beaten the next.

“And it’s not because anything changed, literally just the track. The car is the same. Obviously, tyres were the same, it’s literally just the track is different, and we go from one to the other. So we just take every weekend as it comes. They could be amazing here. And we’ll wait and see.”