Lando Norris said he felt “clueless” and “like I have never driven a Formula 1 car before” after qualifying sixth for the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The Briton’s McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri took pole position, while Norris was 0.426 seconds slower than the Australian.
Norris said: “No big complaints. The car’s amazing. The car’s as good as it has been all season, which is strong.
“Just I’ve been off it all weekend. I don’t know why. Just clueless on track at the minute. I don’t know. I just need a big reset, that’s all.”
The 25-year-old leads the world championship by one point from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and is 13 ahead of Piastri before Sunday’s race.
Verstappen qualified seventh, while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, Mercedes’ George Russell, Pierre Gasly’s Alpine and the second Mercedes of Andrea Kimi Antonelli are between Norris and Piastri on the grid.
Norris said: “I just don’t know how to approach it. I can’t figure it out. Every time I try something, it’s good for one session and then it’s the wrong thing for the next session because the wind’s changed, and I just can’t flow with the car. And when I can’t flow, I’m just not very quick.
“I’ve just got to work on myself. I can’t fault the team and the car is the best by a long way. But clearly I’m just not clicking at the minute.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said Norris had suffered from a weakness that has been afflicting him since the start of the season, in that he is struggling to extrapolate the best from the car in qualifying because of certain handling characteristics it has.
Stella said: “Lando is a very fast driver, a naturally fast driver with an incredible race-craft. It’s more a phase, I think, when it comes to Q3, putting together the lap, that hasn’t worked very well recently, but this is a short phase.
“He is just now in this temporary phase in which, while pushing the car to the limit, there’s a few things that don’t go exactly as he expects, and when you go for the extra 0.1secs in Q3, this becomes more visible.
“We understand what it is. It will just require a bit of adaptation from Lando himself, and some adaptations from the team. But I think the understanding is good, and we are very optimistic that this will be resolved.”
Stella said that the issue does not manifest itself in races, when drivers are not pushing as hard.
“This doesn’t affect the race pace,” Stella said. “Already in practice Lando has shown a very strong lap in the race run simulations, so I’m really looking forward to seeing Lando finding his way back tomorrow to the front of the pack.”
