{"id":574963,"date":"2026-03-30T21:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T21:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/574963\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T21:35:08","slug":"lando-norris-motivated-by-good-signs-for-mclaren-after-top-five-finish-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/574963\/","title":{"rendered":"Lando Norris motivated by \u2018good signs\u2019 for McLaren after top-five finish in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lando Norris believes that McLaren have plenty of \u201cgood signs\u201d from their performance in Japan as they delivered their highest scoring round of the season so far.<\/p>\n

The outfit bounced back from their unlucky double DNS<\/a> last time out in China to finish the weekend with both drivers in the top five, Oscar Piastri<\/a> taking second place in his first Grand Prix start of the year while Norris<\/a> wound up fifth.<\/p>\n

After a quick getaway saw the Briton improve from fifth to third, he struggled to defend against the faster Mercedes of George Russell<\/a>, who recovered from a poor opening lap to find a way back past Norris and Charles Leclerc.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good start,\u201d he said after the race. \u201cI think the pace was good and I think we were decent. Clearly the Mercedes was still on another level, but we could have a nice race with the Ferraris.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was tricky for the first 15 laps to be quite swamped consistently by the Mercedes behind, which went on to win the race. The Ferraris around us are pretty similar on pace so it was a good fight at times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norris gradually became embroiled in a close battle with the second Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton<\/a>, with the pair exchanging positions back and forth throughout the latter stint of the Japanese Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

He had no choice but to make the move stick after Hamilton was cleared of cutting the chicane to gain an advantage, and finally managed to pass him for good to take McLaren\u2019s total points haul to 28.<\/p>\n

Looking back on the contest, Norris said: \u201cYou had to push basically every single lap so that bit of it was good \u2013 the no degradation, and just to get Lewis at the end. I tried to save the tyres a little bit after the Safety Car restart just because I didn\u2019t think much was going to happen for a while.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed to pay off \u2013 I got him with two laps to go so it was just in time. There are good signs. As soon as I had clean air, which I had on two laps of the whole race \u2013 the last lap and one lap in the middle \u2013 the car really came alive quite a bit more.<\/p>\n

“I think in clean air the car was good. Good signs, just if I could\u2019ve qualified higher, if I could\u2019ve done more laps this weekend, things could have been more positive. Otherwise, a good result for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reigning World Champion has been distinctly unlucky with technical challenges in the early part of the season \u2013 he could only complete minimal running in FP2 and FP3 while McLaren worked to amend a suspected hydraulic issue and an ERS (Electrical Recovery System) problem.<\/p>\n

Asked whether he felt the team had taken a step forward, he responded: \u201cIt\u2019s more that things were just better. We\u2019ve not really made a step. We improved the engine side of things and maximised the power unit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was also easier to do that around here, but from a car point of view, we\u2019re still a long way off so I think that\u2019s a good sign that we still finished second and fifth. The car is still a good challenge, so in a way that\u2019s a positive thing, not a negative thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows that if we improve things quite a bit more, or even just a bit more, we can be quick again. We can be very strong and more confident, so this weekend was a good sign for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris believes that McLaren have plenty of \u201cgood signs\u201d from their performance in Japan as they delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-574963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}