McLaren’s Lando Norris reveals the trick behind his return to competitiveness: the reason is unusual. F1 | How a minor McLaren tweak helped Norris return to top form.

After an incredible pole position on Saturday, Lando Norris spoke to the media about the secret that helped him regain the competitiveness that had been missing in recent races, thanks to a small change on his McLaren.

The Mexico GP was a true Norris domination, with the British driver delivering a perfect race after securing first position on Saturday, aided by a McLaren that had returned to strong form. In recent events, Norris’ performance seems to have been steadily improving: he has closed the points gap in the World Championship and overtaken Oscar Piastri, who is now struggling. A lack of pure performance and consistency had often prevented Norris from becoming a truly formidable competitor, but he now seems to have found a simple yet effective solution that is paying off.

The delta screen adjustment

According to Lando Norris, the problem was the display on his steering wheel, specifically the delta lap time data, which provides real-time feedback on the quality of the lap. This information helps drivers understand whether they are improving or losing time. However, Norris felt that the data distracted him and made it easier to make mistakes, which is why he decided to remove it.

No more delta on the dashboard since Monaco: Lando Norris explains why

“Very often, the laps where I don’t really know what happened or how it happened are the ones where I do the best. The less I know, the better I usually perform in qualifying laps,” Norris explained to the media.

“I haven’t used the delta since Monaco, and since then I haven’t used it in qualifying. Who knows if it would have helped or made things worse? Without the delta, I still push to the maximum, no matter how the lap starts or how I approach each corner. Maybe it’s because you don’t have a reference for the total time, so you just try to maximize every corner as much as possible. Otherwise, sometimes I end up staring at it too much, and that’s never a good thing.”

A perfect qualifying lap in Mexico

The qualifying session in Mexico was a masterpiece, with a perfect Q3 lap that stole pole position from Charles Leclerc, who had been fastest after the first run. “It was clearly an incredible lap. I pushed hard on the brakes, took more risks in the fast corners, and generally gave it everything. But without the delta, I didn’t know if I was ahead, behind, or whether the lap was good or not.”

What may seem like a minor detail turned out to be almost decisive for Norris, who now finds himself leading the Championship and seems to have found the right path.