{"id":241231,"date":"2025-10-26T11:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T11:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/241231\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T11:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T11:28:09","slug":"why-norris-didnt-realise-he-was-making-huge-gains-on-final-lap-in-qualifying-%c2%b7-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/241231\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Norris didn’t realise he was making huge gains on final lap in qualifying \u00b7 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lando Norris<\/a> has revealed he turned off a key data feed on his steering wheel in qualifying sessions to improve his performance.<\/p>\n

The McLaren driver, who took pole position for this weekend\u2019s Mexican Grand Prix, made the change after the Monaco Grand Prix. He turned off the display which shows how far he is away from the best lap time on his current lap.<\/p>\n

The delta time updates frequently during the lap. However Norris felt it had become too much of a distraction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve not had it since Monaco,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve never used the delta since, in qualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho knows if it would have helped me or made me worse? The thing when I don\u2019t have it is, I push no matter what \u2014 no matter how the start of the lap was, no matter how any corner was. I guess it\u2019s because you have no reference of maybe the overall lap time, you just always try and maximise every corner to the maximum.<\/p>\n

\u201cOtherwise sometimes I just stare at it too much and that\u2019s never the best thing. So it\u2019s nice because normally when it goes well, like today, it\u2019s a pleasant surprise to see the lap time pop up when it\u2019s as good as this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norris\u2019s first lap in Q3 was a 1\u201916.170. He gained almost six tenths of a second on his final run to claim pole position. As he hadn\u2019t seen his progress on his delta, his final lap time came as a surprise.<\/p>\n

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\u201cObviously it was an incredible lap,\u201d he said. \u201cI pushed the braking everywhere. I pushed the high-speed a bit more and all those things.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I don\u2019t have a delta, so I didn\u2019t know if I was up, if I was down, if it was good, bad, whatever. There were a couple of little places where I thought I messed up a touch and didn\u2019t get the best exits, like out of [turn] six, but the rest of it felt pretty decent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was happy, but I thought I\u2019d be more like a 15.9, 15.8. I thought if I\u2019d get ahead of Charles, I\u2019d be pretty happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when I saw 15.5 on my dash, it put a pretty big smile on my face because it was one of those laps which was \u2014 everything just came together in terms of feeling. It was very natural and similar to my lap in Monaco.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Norris\u2019s first pole position since the Belgian Grand Prix. \u201cIt\u2019s a good feeling because it\u2019s been a while,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not that often this year I get that feeling in this car, even with how quick it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he will have to consult the data to see how he gained so much time on his final lap. \u201cLike I said, I just pushed the braking in a few little places a bit more, and took a couple of bits more risk in the high speed.<\/p>\n

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\u201cQuite often the laps I do best, I don\u2019t really know what\u2019s happened or how it\u2019s happened. Like I said on the radio to Will [Joseph] and [Andrew] Jarv[is], the less I know, the better I do normally on my quali laps. So it was one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut six tenths, I was surprised [by]. I got a bit worried Q3 run one when Charles did a 15.9. I was like, \u2018damn, that\u2019s a pretty impressive lap\u2019. So, like I said, it was nice when I saw 15.5.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2025 Mexican Grand Prix
\nBrowse all 2025 Mexican Grand Prix articles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris has revealed he turned off a key data feed on his steering wheel in qualifying sessions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[113442,49,48,591,82],"class_list":["post-241231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-2025-mexican-grand-prix","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-lando-norris","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}