Norris towards Miami
The Miami GP evokes sweet memories for Lando Norris, who won his first Formula 1 race here in 2024, taking advantage of a nice assist from luck, and returned to the podium last year driving a dominant McLaren. This season, the expectations of the Brit and the papaya team are different: the MCL40 is clearly a step behind the Mercedes, and the developments brought to Florida are optimistic, but only in the battle to be the second force on track.
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Norris is hopeful for this weekend but preaches calm, stating that the updates are a step forward but will hardly be enough to immediately catch Mercedes, echoing what Oscar Piastri said yesterday.
Words from Norris
“I hope Miami will be another race for us to make the leap in quality, as happened in 2024. That was a time when we were much further behind and were going in the right direction. I think now we are very far behind, but we have not adopted a wrong philosophy for the car: we are just behind in development“, this was his comment in Florida. “We don’t know how much the updates will help us, at Suzuka we were a second per lap behind Mercedes, so we can only make a step forward. It must be considered that probably others will also have updates to improve, so we have to understand how much we have caught up with them“.
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Following other drivers, including Max Verstappen, Norris also believes that the regulatory changes approved days ago are just a broth that does not go to the heart of the problem. Also because to intervene on this heart the power units would have to be completely rethought: “It’s hard to go beyond, there is nothing we can really change. There are also many things we simply have to get used to. Qualifying should definitely be a bit better, but in the race nothing changes. We are going in the right direction and I hope there will be other steps forward, but it’s not just about what we drivers want, teams and bosses also have to be satisfied. I believe everyone agrees that there are many things to wish for the future, but we don’t know if it will happen in one, two or three years“.
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