Lando Norris is not settling for a promising Friday in Abu Dhabi. To counter the expected pace of Red Bull, the British driver is calling for further improvements to his McLaren ahead of qualifying.
Abu Dhabi, Norris starts as leader
In the stunning setting of Abu Dhabi, under a beautiful sunset and fading light, Lando Norris continues to impress and steps up his performance compared to the morning session. After narrowly topping the timesheets by just eight thousandths of a second in FP1, the English driver raised the bar in FP2: posting a 1:23.083, he was nearly four tenths faster than both Max Verstappen and George Russell.
The picture becomes even more striking when looking at Norris’ race pace in the closing minutes of FP2. In this phase, the gap to Verstappen was evident at the end of his race simulation: the Brit managed to put up to a full second between himself and the Dutch champion, sending a clear warning to the rest of the weekend. That said, Red Bull has often shown sleepy Fridays before making huge improvements, and Norris is fully aware of that. For this reason, he is still demanding more from his McLaren.
The words of Norris
“Looking at the times, everything is fine at the moment, but I want something more from the car. I’m not completely happy,” Norris said.
“We are trying various setups to understand certain behaviours of the car, so I hope there is still some performance to extract overnight. It was definitely not a bad day; in fact, it was positive, but we know we will need to improve a lot in qualifying. Today’s times won’t give me any advantage for tomorrow.”
If McLaren can deliver the extra edge their driver is demanding, the final qualifying session of 2025 could see Lando Norris claim yet another pole – and perhaps put himself in the perfect position to end the season with a statement victory under the Abu Dhabi lights.
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