The three key areas Norris cost McLaren a Bahrain GP front-row lockout

The delta between Oscar Piastri’s first Q3 run and his second sat at 0.392s, which rather demonstrates the progress made possible on a fresh set of tyres. Had Lando Norris improved by the same amount, we’d be talking about how the margin (which would have stood at less than 0.2s) between them could have swung had Norris’ micro-actions at the wheel and on the throttle.

Instead we’ve got a very different pair of laps to analyse, as Norris never even got close to his team-mate’s lap; there was already a significant fluffing of one’s lines as soon as Norris took his position for Turn 1 – and the difference between drivers only grew from there.

Norris feels that the ultimate 0.426s gap between he and Piastri is all down to him: “The car’s amazing, the car’s as good as it has been the whole season, which is strong. But I’ve been off it all weekend, don’t know why, just clueless on track at the minute. I just need a big reset, that’s all.”

Turn 1-2: Norris’ lock up costs almost 0.2s to Piastri

On approaching the braking zone to the opening corner, Norris was actually up by 0.075s – a scant margin, but one that demonstrated that the Briton had gathered a good exit out of the final corner to prepare his lap. But he’d gone too deep into the first corner, which the F1 TV feed picked up and – through its on-screen graphics – estimated that this had cost him about 0.14s in the lap versus Piastri. In truth, when you look at their relative positions on the exit of Turn 2, it’s more like 0.18s; that’s over a third of the time loss to his team-mate across their laps.

At this point, Piastri has shown Norris the way by coming off-throttle sooner and picking it up sooner in the meantime, ensuring that he got the straightline speed on the run out of the opening sequence. Unlike Norris, he doesn’t slide into the corner and overcook the rear tyre surface.

This stronger burst of pace out of Turn 3 and into Turn 4 brings Piastri’s delta up to around 0.22s, although Norris does manage to stabilise this to some degree through carrying a little more speed into Turn 4. It doesn’t really do him too much good, but it at least allows Norris to ensure the gap doesn’t grow any further.

We can thus assume that half of the gap appears within the first four corners in that case, and Norris at least keeps his deficit to Piastri static through the following downhill corners too.

Turn 8-9-10: Piastri calmer at the wheel, Norris trying to chase lap-time

Norris tries to take a bit more speed into Turn 8, and for a split second that 0.2s deficit immediately puts Norris back on par with his team-mate. But lap time doesn’t come for free, and Norris immediately had to take a more tentative approach when reapplying the throttle.

Ultimately, this ended up costing a further sliver of time; Piastri could get on the throttle sooner, and more smoothly. Norris had to lift and reapply to counteract a snap on the exit of the corner.

At the Turn 9-10 section, Norris again tried to slow the car later and again found himself picking up the throttle later than Piastri. It’s a tricky corner to brake for as the front-left wheel unloads and becomes incredibly prone to locking, so taking it easy into the corner allows the driver to straighten up a little sooner. As such, Piastri is able to wind on the accelerator a little sooner and thus enjoy a bit more speed down the back straight.

As a result of the better exit, Piastri gains another tenth on Norris – the delta between them is now around 0.36-0.37s.

Turn 13: Compounding Norris’ misery

It feels very much as though Norris has given up on the lap by the time he exits Turn 11; the delta on his steering wheel will have likely not made for desirable reading at this point.

Turn 13 Piastri and Norris comparison

Photo by: Autosport

He’s at least reversed the trend and braked earlier for a corner than Piastri, and then gets on the throttle sooner to carry marginally more speed through Turn 12. But it is indeed only very marginal, perhaps worth 0.01s in the long run – and besides, Norris’ approach to Turn 13 largely undoes that.

A criticism of Norris’ efforts across the lap is that he doesn’t seem to be able to time his braking particularly well; for the most part, he’s trying to ride the brakes too late into the corner and then suffers on throttle pick-up – in the instance of Turn 13, he’s onto the brakes way too soon.

On the way into the corner, Norris is tracking at 0.37s behind Piastri. You can then note from the speed trace that he gets off the power sooner than Piastri; although this does allow Norris to pick up a bit more straightline speed on the exit of the corner, Piastri gets a bit more top-end, presumably down to the timing of his upshifts.

As you’d probably infer from Norris’ downbeat post-qualifying snippets to the media, he does appear to be overthinking his approach to McLaren’s MCL39 considerably. He’s put himself into an unhelpful feedback loop: ‘the car doesn’t suit my style, therefore it isn’t natural to me, therefore I will struggle’, a loop that can be broken but only with the sufficient willpower from the driver in question.

Remember Australia, where his main qualifying advantage over Piastri appeared to sit in his tacit acceptance that he couldn’t try to hustle the McLaren through the corners because it wasn’t going to like it? The tables have turned. Norris sees a pace deficit and tries to put the car in places it doesn’t want to be in and, as a result, the gap continues to grow…