Facing an enemy within, struggling Norris needs to find answers fast

By his own admission, Lando Norris says he doesn’t understand how is still leading the 2025 drivers’ championship as he continues to feel that things “aren’t clicking” for him following the Bahrain Grand Prix.

As McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri took another dominant win – his second in three races – Norris had another difficult weekend in which he managed a third-place finish, over 16 seconds behind the Australian.

With a car that’s seen as a step ahead of the competition, Norris has only won the season-opening race and is three points ahead of Piastri in the standings as the latter continued with his 100% record of winning races when starting from pole position.

It was the Aussie’s fourth career win, and one that kept piling pressure on Norris to rediscover the form that made title favourite following testing.

Norris’s troubles began with a poor qualifying effort that saw him finish down in sixth as Piastri secured the top spot, but a brilliant start that moved him up to third gave hope to the Briton that he could fight in front.

That hope was quickly gone when it became apparent that Norris had lined up incorrectly on the grid, the stewards handing him a five-second penalty and starting a series of events that compromised his race even further.

Piastri, meanwhile, went to put on a calm performance that could have been even more dominant if not for the safety car erasing his gap, solidifying the notion that he has been the more solid of the McLaren drivers this year.

For Norris, who spent last year mostly fighting a different car in the form of Max Verstappen‘s Red Bull, struggling to match his team-mate’s performances this season is obviously bad news, particularly as he appears lost about why he is not performing at the level he clearly can.

“I feel like I know what I can do, know what I can achieve. It’s not gone, I’ve not lost it,” said Norris after the Sakhir race. “It’s just things aren’t clicking and I need to somehow look into why they’re not clicking but it’s not proving to be too easy.

“I left late last night. I spent a lot of time trying to look into what happened, why I struggled so much, why I’m not feeling confident. And I guess we kind of narrowed down to a few things, not maybe clear answers and definitive answers, but a few reasons of why maybe I’ve been struggling a bit more here and there with my qualifiers and the pace and stuff.”

Piastri has been, on average, the quickest of the McLaren drivers by nearly two-tenths in year’s qualifying sessions, and his quiet, seemingly unflappable mental strength is currently making him the title favourite in some people’s eyes.