The yellow flags came out, the camera cut to a car very much in the barrier, and when it became clear through the settling dust that it was a McLaren, you just knew it was Lando Norris.
“F***ing idiot”, came the standout line from Norris’ team radio, after confirming he was OK.
Heading into Q3 as arguably the favorite for pole position, and certainly well in the mix, Norris’ session was over before he even had a time on the board. P10 would be his best starting spot, and his team had a car to rebuild.
There were multiple reasons you felt you knew which McLaren driver it was going to be, with Oscar Piastri seemingly so calm and methodical in his approach so far this season, even as he looks — and so far succeeds — to up his qualifying game.
But for Norris, the fallout from Bahrain was a real knock to his confidence. P6 in qualifying and third place in the race, while Piastri comfortably won, rocked the championship leader, who admitted he had to try and clear his head between races as the triple header quickly shifted to Saudi Arabia.
“I needed a couple of days off; I needed a reset,” Norris said on arrival in Jeddah. “I probably would have liked a few more days altogether, but I made the most of my three days relaxing, kind of getting away from everything a little bit.
“But at the same time I think with every athlete’s mind and every driver’s mind, as much as you try and get away, you’re still thinking of a lot of things, so for a lot of my time I was still thinking of the difficulties that I’ve been struggling with.
“It’s still been a very good start to the year. I try to force myself to think of what a success the start of the season has been. Yes, I know I could have been better, but still to be leading the championship after not being happy, after not feeling comfortable in the car, it’s still a start to the year that I would have dreamed of before the season started.
“So I think I try to remind myself of some of the positives, which there’s still been quite a few of, but there’s still a lot of me, and being myself has been trying to figure out the issues, the struggles, the reasoning behind it all. The most difficult thing is trying to find the answers to things, [and] I think we’re along the right track.”
The difference in Norris was noticeable between the frustrated and downbeat figure in Bahrain and the one that arrived in Saudi Arabia, and the words stood out even before a wheel had been turned on track. It’s not that Norris wasn’t being as self-critical as ever, but he was articulating himself in a far more clear and constructive way than he had been when struggling a few days earlier.
Norris may have made quite a mistake, but it’s a matter of pushing the limits. Clive Mason/Getty Images
“I know I can be so much better and perform at a much higher level than what I’m doing now,” he said. “My level of confidence was very high at the end of last season — not for any other reason, but I just understood the car, I understood how to drive it and I could go out and execute things perfectly.
“Now I cannot, just because my feelings are not there, my way of driving is not suited at all. I just hate not being able to know how I’m going to go out and perform in the qualifying lap. Maybe this is a lie but … last year if you asked me, ‘Are you confident going into qualifying?’ I would have been much more likely to say yes than what I am now.
“That’s just because of how I feel in the car itself. No, it’s not for any reason, but I know what I can do and I know what I’m doing and I know what I can … achieve is a lot higher than what I’m doing now.
“So the fact that I’m still leading the championship, the fact that the start of the year has not been dreadful probably gives me more hope than anything else — that if I can get things to click and move in the right direction that I’m hopeful that I can start to become much stronger.”
It is admirable that Norris wears his heart on his sleeve, even if it can feel like he’s being too harsh on himself at times. But I’ll admit I was expecting those quotes to either vindicate his reset after a strong performance in Saudi Arabia, or be far removed from his updated outlook if he had a poor one.
Hitting the wall at Turn 5 after looking to have a slight edge over teammate Piastri all weekend, and leaving himself 10th on the grid while Max Verstappen and Piastri make up the front row, could easily have shattered Norris’ confidence once again. But instead, there were signs of recovery from the 25-year-old, even if his expletive over team radio was something he laughed at when reminded of it.
“Makes sense! I agree with it,” Norris said over an hour after his crash. “I should be fighting for pole, and especially on a [first run in Q3] lap I shouldn’t be taking any silly risks like I seemed to have done.
“I will go and review it all, but it’s not a guarantee we would have been on pole because Max did a good job. Red Bull were quick the whole of qualifying; it wasn’t really a surprise. It would have been nice to be in that fight, I was doing well until then and feeling comfortable but [the radio messages] makes sense — I shunted!
“Not proud or happy. I let myself and the team down and the guys have a big job to fix it all. It’s just the way it is. I agree with what I said, but I still look forward to tomorrow and have to try and make up for today.”
The reasons for optimism stem from the way Norris dismissed the mistake as something completely separate to his recent struggles in terms of the way his McLaren handles, and he’s actually seen so much progress on that front.
McLaren’s Andrea Stella hasn’t had any confidence shaken by Norris’ slightly troubled start to the season. Zak Mauger/LAT Images
Given how open and honest he can be, it’s hard to doubt Norris when he is being more positive than you expect, but it was a picture that was reinforced by his team principal Andrea Stella, who believes the race will actually give Norris an opportunity to showcase his mental resilience.
“100 percent, not only in the next 24 hours, but I would say that after five minutes — or at least after five minutes that Lando was here back in the office — immediately the mindset changed,” Stella said.
“That’s not the position that we want to be in a race in which we could have started from the front row, but actually we take it as an opportunity to show our determination, to show the strength from our attitudinal point of view, in terms of our mindset, and this was very much what we talked about in the debrief — post-qualifying — and also the genuine attitude that everyone brought into the debriefing and into preparing and positioning the team to have a good race tomorrow.
“I really hope that we will be in condition to have some free air laps tomorrow, use the pace that we saw on Friday, and this weekend could actually be a weekend from which we come out stronger, reinforced, even more confident, because we see our strengths, and I think this aspect of the qualifying is very episodical.
“We just have to understand how to deal with the fact that perhaps sometimes you just don’t have to go for the final few milliseconds until we make the car just more genuine in terms of the cueing and the feedback that the car gives to the drivers. This is 100 percent the responsibility of the team.”
Perhaps trying to take a share of the blame onto the team’s shoulders was a stretch — Piastri didn’t put it in the wall and was 0.01s off pole position, after all — but Stella will always protect his driver, even if he insists he doesn’t need to pick Norris up after his error.
This weekend, you believe him. Norris might have just thrown away a huge chunk of points and the championship lead, but his progression in Jeddah and attitude on Saturday night suggests this could still be a significant weekend in the wider context of his personal development into a stronger championship contender.
