Lando Norris has revealed that he's switched off a vital piece of lap time information from his McLaren F1 dashboard in qualifying in a bid to help him do better.
After taking a crucial pole position for Formula 1’s 2025 Mexican Grand Prix, Norris shed light on a tactic he has employed since Monaco.
He has turned off the delta time from his dash – which displays to him live information of how his lap compares to either previous best efforts or the provisional pole lap.
While it means he never knows how close he is to the top spot until he crosses the timing beam at the end, he thinks not having that information actually helps clear his mind.
Reflecting on how the lack of visibility of the delta left him totally unaware of how good his Mexico lap was while he was doing it, he said: “Quite often the laps that I don't really know what's happened, or how it's happened, are the laps I do the best.
“Like I said on the radio to Will [Joseph, race engineer] and Jarv (Andrew Jarvis, performance engineer) - the less I know, the better I do normally on my quali laps. So it was one of them.”
Norris concedes there may be an argument that having better information in the heat of qualifying could be of assistance, but he thinks ultimately not having this specific lap time delta on a screen to chase inside the car helps him.
It not only stops him obsessing over numbers so he can concentrate on driving, but it also means that his focus is always on finishing a lap and not abandoning them.
“I've not had it since Monaco, and I've never used the delta since in qualifying,” Norris explained. “Who knows if it would have helped me or made me worse.
“I think the thing when I don't have it is I push no matter what – no matter how the start of the lap was, no matter how any corner was.
“I guess it's because you have no reference of maybe the overall lap time, you just always try and maximise every corner to the maximum. Otherwise, sometimes I just stare at it too much, and that's never the best thing.
“It's just nice because normally when it goes well, like today, it's a pleasant surprise to see the lap time pop up when it's as good as this one.”
Confusing pole
While Norris’s title rivals Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri struggled for pace in a session where everyone was battling low grip conditions, Norris said that the lap that got him pole was technically not perfect.
Asked about where the six tenths leap he made from his first Q3 run came from to depose Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, he said: “That's the confusing thing. I mean, it was obviously an incredible lap. I pushed the braking everywhere. I pushed the high speed a bit more, and all those things.
“But I don't have a delta, so I don't know if I was up, if I was down, if it was good, bad, whatever. There were a couple little places where I thought I messed up a touch and didn't get the best exits, like out of Turn 6, but the rest of it felt pretty decent.”
Norris felt that he found a happy place with the McLaren set-up that allowed him to unlock the sort of confidence that he had in the car back in Monaco, one of only three times he's won from pole so far this year.
“It was one of those laps where everything just came together in terms of feeling," Norris said. "It was very natural, and similar to my lap in Monaco.
“So a good feeling because it's been a while. It's not that often this year I get that feeling in this car, even with how quick it is.”
