Lando Norris says the topic about suspension is stretched a bit too much and people making it a bit more than what it is in F1 2025 fight.
After ending the 2024 F1 season on a high, it looked like 2025 will be the year of Norris. But it hasn’t been as simple. McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri has stepped up with all his might. The Australian has excelled on the circuits he didn’t last year and continued the fine run where he did.
In some ways, the updates have made him more comfortable with the car unlike Norris. For some reason, the Brit hasn’t found the perfect rhythm, especially in qualifying. He has made mistakes which has cost him heavy in the races, where he is on the catch-up role than being the leader.
For most part, Piastri has it under control, which is why he leads Norris by eight points. But the Brit has started to find his mojo back in qualifying. McLaren brought an update on the suspension. This is seemingly helped Norris, while Piastri has mostly stayed away from using it.
Norris has acknowledged of the change, but he doesn’t wish to put everything to on that one change. He feels that the media narrative makes the performance all about suspension which is not the entire picture. He has kind words for his team in solving a lot of the issues he has faced.
But it is never 100%. “Honestly, and it’s even an answer I can’t give to the team that clearly, if you ask me now, is it better or not? I can’t give a definitive answer,” started Norris, when asked about what has changed with the suspension and how it all came about. “It’s something that we believe might shift things in the right direction. That’s how small of a change it was.
“It wasn’t like, we know this is going to help, it’s going to do a better job. It’s also not a performance item. It’s not something that we’ve got and gone, now we’re going to be quicker. It’s something that might change how the feeling is to the steering and to the front suspension. But because you go track to track, it’s not something you can necessarily just change between sessions. It’s not where I can just go out and give a clean answer to the team.
“It’s one where I’ve just got to have the confidence and belief in the guys and girls who have put it together and thought of it believe it’s in the right direction to give me maybe some more feelings or a better feeling, or more of a contrast in feeling. And I’m happy enough that that’s a good enough answer, that they think it’s better, and I’m confident that it’s going to give me that feeling, but it’s not something I can go, I’m feeling a lot more in the car. I certainly felt more in Austria.
“Canada is a very separate one and the car is always all over the place in Canada, so it’s hard to judge things there. But certainly in Canada, I felt like we unlocked a little bit more, but I also don’t feel like I’m still back to the level necessarily that I was at last year with feeling, understanding, and things like that. But it’s a complicated one at the same time because a lot of other things have changed too. So, as a team, we’re working hard. Obviously, I’m working very hard with my team to understand more things and tried more stuff in the simulator and expand my vocabulary of driving in a way.
“But it’s, yeah, also one where I guess I have to use my experience of being a driver and saying last year I was very confident that I had more knowledge, more feeling through the car, because I’m the last guy that will ever say, guys, the car is just not good or isn’t as good or whatever. I never want to blame it in that perspective, but I certainly wasn’t happy. I made that clear to the team, and I think I was therefore in a position where the team got to work on their side and I got to work on my side.
“Together, we made some improvements, and I’m happy with that so far. Anyhow you sound more positive than I still am [about it solving everything]. Yeah. 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 maximizing 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,” summed up Norris, who cleared in detail about comfort in the car.
He stated about using his past experience in pinpointing what changed for him from last year to this. This helped in understanding some of the problems to solve. But as with anything, it can’t be 100% and so he is doing with whatever he has, which is a touch better than how it was at the start of 2025.
“I’ll say I’m more comfortable, I wouldn’t say I’m completely comfortable,” continued Norris. “The thing is, it’s hard because I can’t really compare to many other people. I don’t know what other people think, feel, do inside the car, and I can only speak for myself and my experience of previous years, and only ever driving McLarens, because that’s the only car I’ve ever driven.
“So, I have to use my experience and voice my opinion on what I think is different and all those things based upon my past experiences in different cars over the past few years. But I’m also very much a driver who feels most of my things, like most people, through their hands. There are obviously many other senses that when you’re in the car, you try to use and utilise and put them all together, whether it’s your vision and just feeling through your body and your legs, your feet, but always my understanding of where the grip lies comes through my hands and through the steering wheel.
“For me, that’s my most sensitive area. Anything that’s always been since I’ve started, I’ve always been very vocal, more vocal than my past team-mates, whether that was with Carlos or Daniel, on issues that I’ve had in terms of feeling through the steering and grip and understanding these different things. That can be positive and negative at the same time, but that’s just something I’ve learned over the years. I think it’s a strength of mine, my understanding of that.
“But therefore, when I don’t have those feelings and I can’t use those feelings to get the maximum out of the car to perform at my limit, then I’m not happy, I guess. And I’m not as comfortable as I want to be. So, it’s trying to understand where I feel like we’ve lacked or we’ve lost some of those things this season and how to get them back,” summed up Norris.
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