Norris hates "to have a reason for why sometimes I struggle"
Having put in a dominant performance in Saturday's qualifying session, McLaren driver Lando Norris admitted he hates to find "a reason for why" he sometimes struggles to extract the maximum of his car.
McLaren driver Lando Norris looked untouchable in the third and final practice at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez, having topped the last hour of practice in style.
The Briton looked strong across qualifying, but he Ferrari managed to pose a challenge to the McLaren man in the final segment of qualifying. However, Norris duly delivered on his last lap, pulling out a special flying run to grab a first pole since Belgium.
His team-mate Oscar Piastri has struggled all weekend by comparison and qualifying day was no different, as he wound up a good few tenths back time and time again.
The Australian had to work hard to reach Q3, and even if he looked slightly more comfortable in his McLaren in the dying seconds of qualifying, he only ended up eighth quickest. The championship leader will inherit one place when Carlos Sainz serves his grid penalty.
Norris has been quite open this year about how tough it was at the start to get a good feeling with the front end of the car. Asked whether he comes into a weekend now confident that he will be able to extract the maximum out of the car for one lap, Norris said that he had known on Friday that he would have a good weekend based on the initial feeling.
"I think, even when I look at my first lap in FP2 — my first lap of the weekend — it’s a track which is not easy because of the downforce and the grip and things like that. High end of straight speed, big braking zones.
"But my first lap, I was on it. I was, again, pleasantly surprised at how quick I was on the pace compared to everyone — to the others who already did FP1.
"But certainly, it’s hard to quantify how much the work the team has done behind the scenes to give me a bit more of what I want and what I need in order to perform at the level that I can perform at, which is the level of today and certain other places where we’ve been this season.
"But it was only a few weekends ago in Singapore where I almost felt like it was the beginning of the season again — no feeling for the front, no confidence, no ability to go out and do what I did today. No confidence to do what I did today. So it’s a little bit up and down still. There’s certainly areas we have to improve. And if I want to be able to do what I did today more often — which I do — we have to improve the car more."
Quali day thoughts 💭#McLaren | #MexicoGP 🇲🇽 pic.twitter.com/DTKiUNM2Nd
— McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team (@McLarenF1) October 26, 2025
Having put in a dominant performance in Saturday's qualifying session, McLaren driver Lando Norris admitted he hates to find "a reason for why" he sometimes struggles to extract the maximum of his car.
"And I’ve got to try and make it more to my liking. But there’s certainly a lot of work that I’ve also done personally, away from the track, with my team, with a lot of people to understand what my struggles were, reasoning, all those things, and then how I can combat it. Because the last thing I want is to make the excuse.
"Like, at the end of the day, it’s my job to drive whatever car I get given, whether it’s a great one or a terrible one. I don’t feel like I should ever have a reason to have an excuse.
"There’s reasoning for things — why I struggle here, why I’ve struggled there, and so forth — but it’s not an excuse. If I’m slow, I’ll say I’ve just done a bad job, and I wasn’t a good enough driver on that day. And I think I’ve always been open about those things. But yeah, there are clearly things which work for me and things that don’t.
"I hate that because I hate to have a reason for why sometimes I struggle. I just want to be able to drive whatever car I get given. But certainly, progress has been made. And I’m very happy that the team has worked hard to improve on those things. But we still need to make more if I want to be even better.
