Norris on the regulations: “Little changes in the race. Teams and bosses must also be satisfied, not just us”

Norris to 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 Briton and the papaya team are different: the MCL40 is clearly a step behind Mercedes, and the developments brought to Florida make us optimistic, but only in the battle to be the second force on the track. Norris is hopeful for this weekend but preaches calm, stating that the updates are a step forward but that they will hardly help to catch Mercedes immediately, following what Oscar Piastri said yesterday. Norris’ words “I hope that Miami is 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 we were going in the right direction. I think we are very behind now, but we haven’t adopted the 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, in Suzuka we were one second per lap from Mercedes, so we can only take a step forward. We must consider that the others will probably also have updates to improve, so we need to understand how much we have recovered compared to them.” Instead, following the other drivers, including Max Verstappen, Norris also believes that the regulatory changes approved a few days ago are just a tidbit that doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. Also because to intervene on this heart the power units would have to be completely rethought: “It’s difficult to go further, there’s nothing we can really change. There are also many things we simply have to get used to. Qualifying should certainly be a little better, but nothing changes in the race. We’re going in the right direction and I hope there are other steps forward, but it’s not just about what we drivers want, we also have to satisfy the teams and the bosses. I think everyone is quite in agreement in saying that there are many things to wish for for the future, but We don’t know if it will happen in one, two or three years.”

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News
2026-05-01 16:45:00