'If I don't win… that's life': why F1 title contenders are playing it cool

F1
December 6, 2025

There wasn't much fighting talk from the three F1 title contenders ahead of the 2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. But there's a good reason that they seemed disinterested, says a leading sports psychologist

Verstappen with Norris and Piastri at 2025 Abu Dhabi press conference

Calmness personified in the Abu Dhabi press conference

Red Bull

December 6, 2025

If Thursday’s press conference was your first glimpse of F1, you’d be forgiven for thinking that winning the world championship was a take-it-or-leave-it prize for each of the three contenders.

“I’m not too bothered,” said championship leader Lando Norris. “I’ll do the best I can. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, then I’ll try again next year.”

Max Verstappen hit a similar note. “Trophy looks the same,” said the four-time champion. “I’ve already achieved everything that I wanted to achieve in F1, and everything is just a bonus.”

Most animated was Oscar Piastri, but that was only in relative terms. “I mean, it’d be pretty cool [to win], to be honest,” he said.

Of course, on track, the reality has been different: witness Norris’s aggressive moves in Canada and Singapore; Piastri’s frustration at having to let Norris past him in Monza, and Verstappen’s relentless comeback from 104 points down.

In races, it’s obvious that each of the trio will push track limits, racing guidelines and team instructions as far as they feasibly can in search of success.

So why play it so cool in the press conference?

“I’m not going to let my desire to win sabotage my ability to perform”

If we go really textbook then, in psychology, you’re probably along the lines of detachment here,” says Dr Robbie Anderson, head of performance psychology at Hintsa Performance, which supports elite athletes and teams in F1 and elsewhere

“It’s like a psychological detachment from an outcome; one of the most common tools in high-performance sport, especially in big moment events like finales or World Cup finals or the Olympic Games.

“We all practice this in our lives. You say, ‘Well, the project is not that important and I’ll get to it in the morning’, in the vain hope of getting some sleep.

“What we’re saying here is, I’m not going to let my desire to win sabotage my ability to perform.”

F1 drivers look to optimise their performance in every area they can, with specialists advising on fitness, nutrition and driving technique, in addition to the data analysis from sim work and practice sessions.

Yuki Tsunoda in gym with Red Bull F1 trainer

Psychology sits alongside fitness work as a key ingredient in F1 success

Red Bull

As Anderson explains, psychology can help maximise the benefits from each of these areas by ensuring the driver is operating at their maximum. As the season comes to a close, one key approach is to downplay the importance of big events like title finales.

“There’s very clear neuroscience on this,” says Anderson, who is overseeing a team of Hintsa Performance psychologists in Abu Dhabi this weekend. “We have a survival based system, which is looking for danger and bringing it to our attention. When that’s activated, we have an increase in stress hormones. We know from research that when we perceive stress we have an increase in cortisol and adrenaline, and they limit our frontal lobe. Our frontal lobe is great for decision making and great for regulating emotion.

“What we’re basically saying is, when we get stressed, some of our capacity is impaired, therefore can we reduce the stress?

“One way we can do that is to reappraise the situation we’re facing. So don’t make it a do or die or a final moment. Make it an opportunity, make it a race, make it business as usual, as much as you reasonably can.

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“We’re also thinking about control, to deal with what’s in front of you, and to say to yourself, ‘What do I control?’. Because of the way the brain’s wired, if we start to base things like confidence on outcomes that we don’t control, the brain has to go into a threat state because that’s to say, ‘well, I don’t control that’.

“ [The drivers] are probably saying, ‘Well, I control looking at it as a single event. I control seeing it as a long career, not just one moment that’s going to make or break me’.”

This year’s championship rivals sounded like they were echoing Anderson in their thoughts ahead of this weekend.

“We will just try to have a good weekend. But then even then, it’s not really in my control, you know?” said Verstappen, while Norris gave a textbook answer to a question on how he was approaching the race. “Same as every weekend,” he said.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in Abu Dhabi GP paddock

Business as usual for McLaren’s drivers this weekend

McLaren

Do the drivers really believe it, though? Anderson and his team prefer to work with drivers over a full season or longer, helping them to build a driver’s state of mind over time, so they aren’t just parroting the right things, they truly believe them.

“You can’t lie to yourself,” he says. “Over time we can help drivers work on, for example, how they see sport and how they keep it in perspective. They see it all, ideally, as a great privilege, as a great adventure and, of course, an opportunity to fulfil some of those basic dreams they had as a kid, just wanting to win and compete.

“If you’ve done that work and you genuinely have that as your belief system, then honestly, this weekend is another opportunity to do something that you really love, and if you believe that you’re good, then you honestly believe you will have another go.

“I really don’t think of the pressure until you guys ask it all the time”

One major contributor to success is the support network that drivers have around them, and Norris emphasised this in Las Vegas when he spoke about how he kept upbeat during a torrid mid-season, thanks to a “very strong” group of people around him, “people who always have my best interest at heart”.

McLaren’s decision to stop drivers from speaking to the media is not unrelated to this. The only chance to ask questions before qualifying was at the Thursday press conference, where Norris spoke about dealing with the pressure. “I really don’t think of it at all until you guys ask it all the time.” He added, jokingly: “So, it’s trying to avoid you guys as much as possible!”

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Anderson sees this as a sensible tactic. “Good regulation skills can be taught on top of the mindset. That’s where it could be, ‘I can feel myself getting a bit maybe bit too much media, bit too many questions. I’m just going to get myself to a quieter environment. I’m just going to focus on me for a while.

“If people ask you, how important is this weekend, then of course, it’s going to tell the brain, ‘this weekend must be really important!’.”

Sailing through the weekend in a zen bubble is, however, not a one-size-fits-all solution for every F1 driver, not least because they might require an entirely different mindset when they are in the car.

Anderson turns to rugby as an example. “You might have somebody who plays fantastically because they’re very calm and they feel that enables them to read the game, and you have other rugby players who say ‘Absolutely no chance! If I’m not at a certain level of aggression I am not going to be able to dominate my opposite number’.

“Everyone’s unique. It’s to work out what mindset, what energy, what level of competitiveness you operate best with, and getting to that level on Sunday is something I think you would hope that each of them knows what that feels like, and they’ll have a routine to get them there.

“Of course, somebody like Max has had this situation before, and therefore may be more familiar with what could come to him on Sunday emotionally, whereas somebody like Oscar possibly hasn’t. That’s how each of them is going to have to prepare for the weekend, possibly the newer driver has to prepare for it with more unknowns.”

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