What is going on with Lando Norris?

When asked which positives he took away from the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix, Lando Norris replied: “That it’s finished, probably.”

There’s one early championship favourite within the McLaren camp, and it isn’t Norris.

Having started the season with a pole-to-flag win in Melbourne, Norris has found it tougher to mask his discomfort with McLaren’s 2025 car since the opening weekend. He was the second-best McLaren driver in China, and neither he nor Piastri nailed their Suzuka qualifying laps, opening the door for Max Verstappen heroics.

But with McLaren well on top once more in Bahrain, it was Piastri who strung together a flawless weekend from start to finish, adding a pole and win to his record to close within three points of his team-mate.

Norris was messy by his own admission, starting with a difficult qualifying lap that left him sixth on the grid. He was still expected to cruise to the podium in a high-degradation race on a circuit where overtaking is much easier than at the previous three venues.

But he made life more difficult for himself by misaligning with his grid box. He first parked too far back, then rolled too far forward, earning a five-second penalty. He made a great start to move up to third before having to absorb his penalty during an early pitstop.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc pitted much later and built up a tyre advantage, which he used to pass the intrinsically quicker McLaren. After a safety car reset Norris eventually re-took the position, but then clumsy overtake attempts on an ailing Mercedes of George Russell left him stranded in third.

“Every time I did one thing good, I did two bad in a way,” Norris said. “I just kept stopping myself from making as much progress as I should have done today.”

Key to Norris’ struggles is his unease in McLaren’s 2025 car, which has seen substantial changes compared to the car McLaren won the 2024 constructors’ title with. His qualifying performance was void of obvious mistakes but just underlined how he and his machine were not at one in each sector of the Sakhir circuit. Twitchy. Behind the curve. Unsure what to expect.

Team boss Andrea Stella protected his drivers and felt it was a joint responsibility within the team to make Norris more comfortable driving the MCL39. But Norris doesn’t feel like there are obvious solutions at hand. Clearly, otherwise he would have applied them already.

“I wish I knew the answer,” Norris replied when Motorsport.com asked him what he can do on the short term to gel with his car.

“When you’re an athlete, when you’re a driver, whatever it is – you just know when things click, when you feel confident, when you feel comfortable. I’m confident that I have everything I need and I’ve got what it takes. I have no doubt about that.

“But something’s just not clicking with me and the car. I’m not able to do any of the laps like I was doing last season. Then, I knew – every single corner – everything that was going to happen with the car, how it was going to happen. I felt on top of the car.

“This year, I could not have felt more opposite so far. Even in Australia, whether or not I won the race, I never felt comfortable, never felt confident. The car was just mega and that’s helping me get out of a lot of problems at the minute. But I’m just nowhere near the capability that I have – which hurts to say.”

If Norris has taken a step backwards compared to a strong 2024 campaign, then in the opposite side of the garage his counterpart is heading in the other direction, with Piastri’s crescendo form curve doubling the pain for Norris.

“I mean, the car’s good,” he said with a wry smile. “It won the race. So yeah, as happy as I can be…”

Stella praised the unflappable Australian for having “no noise inside his head”, which he labelled a useful quality for an F1 driver. The contrast with Norris is stark, with the Briton calling himself names after qualifying.

But that trademark openness about his failings is therapeutic and compartmentalised, Norris says, rather than something sinister that affects his driving ability or self-esteem.

“The thing is, I think it would be even harder for me to not show any of these things,” he said. “When I do my interviews a lot of it is probably just getting my frustration out.

“It’s because of my desire to do well and my ambition to win. When I know what I can do and what I’m capable of, and I’m not even close to reaching that – like Saturday – I’m very disappointed in myself. That’s just the way I am.

“But I don’t think it necessarily has a bad impact. I’ve done it so much my whole life, I’ve learned how to block my own comments away from my thoughts. Maybe sometimes I lack a bit of self-belief, and I have done in the past. But this is just also me. It’s the way I do things, it’s the way I work, it’s what has made me as good as I am, and probably maybe at times has limited me from becoming a better driver.”

Having gained experience battling Verstappen last year for an unlikely title bid, and now having a car at his disposal that Red Bull can’t match from the start of the season, Norris could have been expected to start on the front foot as McLaren’s lead driver.

The less experienced but more consistent Piastri has now seemingly picked up that baton, but Norris is backing himself to find a way out.

“I think what I can do and what I can achieve is good enough and easily up there with the best,” he vowed. “So, I just need to get back in that rhythm. Yes, maybe sometimes I’m too hard on myself but I came back after a nice sleep, re-energised, new day and good to go again and put up a good fight.

“Today was a new day, and I have a few days off now to recover and go again.”