PALMER: What went wrong for Lando Norris during his ‘messy’ Bahrain Grand Prix weekend?

Lando Norris still leads the championship, but by only a slender margin as Oscar Piastri took a dominant win in Bahrain and looks increasingly assured, whilst Lando had his scrappiest weekend of the season.

Qualifying was a stronghold for Norris last season, as he beat his team mate 20-4 in the head to head, and it was the launchpad for his superiority within McLaren and his late title challenge in 2024. The pace differential was often fairly close, but Lando had a knack of extracting the last bit of time in Q3 which often was the deciding factor.

READ MORE: Norris rues ‘messy race’ after P3 finish in Bahrain as he vows to ‘step it up’ at Saudi Arabian GP

This appeared the case again in Melbourne, when both McLaren drivers had pressured final runs at the season opener and Norris triumphed to narrowly take pole, which was the critical advantage for the race win.

Since then we have seen less of the Norris final lap heroics, though, and more Q3 errors as he’s battled to come to terms with a McLaren which isn’t as suited to his driving style as the 2024 car was.

Lando likes to attack the corner entries with late braking and a big peak pressure, but in recent qualifying sessions he’s come unstuck in the low speed. There have been braking errors at the hairpin in China in both Sprint Qualifying and Qualifying itself, an under-driven final chicane in Japan, as well as another Q3 error in Bahrain in the low speed first turn.

The innate pace is usually there or thereabouts for a driver who has always excelled over one lap, but it seems that trying to balance attacking the slow speed entries without making mistakes – whilst also not under-driving – is where the biggest challenge lies.

In contrast, Oscar has generally been able to complete more laps at the limit in Q3, and has excelled in these low speed corners, managing the “hairpin of his life” in Shanghai and a blitzing run through the low speed in the final chicane at Suzuka to almost snatch pole.

For Lando, when it’s hooked up he’s still got the pace, but he has to find a way to balance his natural attacking style with a car that is more on a knife edge. If he qualifies at the front then we know he can soak up the pressure, as he’s done for his past two wins – in Abu Dhabi last year with the Teams’ Championship on the line and in Melbourne this year.

READ MORE: ‘I feel like I’ve never driven an F1 car’ – Norris left searching for answers after disappointing P6 result in Bahrain Qualifying

From further back in Bahrain though, it seemed like he was second-guessing himself a lot and it culminated in a messy evening for him and a potential three points lost as he failed to recover to make it a McLaren 1-2.

Even the way that Lando lined up on the grid was strange. The yellow lines that are painted on the grid act as a reference for the drivers to use to line their front wheels up with the front of the grid box and maximise their position. Lando initially lined up acceptably, but twice released the clutch to trickle forward.

The first movement forward probably put him in the perfect place to start the race, but as he sought to shuffle up even more, he must have lost his reference and simply overshot his marks.

Once you lose sight of the yellow line from the cockpit sides it is all guesswork and you have to be cautious. The few centimetres you stand to gain can be a tiny advantage compared to the penalty that he incurred by going over.

READ MORE: McLaren bosses hail ‘perfect weekend’ from Bahrain winner Piastri – but warn that it’s ‘a matter of time’ before ‘epic battle’ with Norris

Fortunately for Norris he then got a brilliant launch, which meant that he gained three places in the first corners, and McLaren did a great job in pitting him early to effectively undercut the gaggle he’d have dropped into had he served his penalty at the same time as others stopped.

The start and the strategy saved his podium fight in the race, but really the penalty was a basic error and it derailed his chance to jump George Russell in the stops for an early P2.

I’ve seen Norris race brilliantly in the past – I remember in Canada a couple of years ago in 2023, he was making some beautiful, clinical passes at the hairpin to progress up the order – and some of his late braking efforts even on Max last year were good, including in Austria and Mexico in the heat of championship pressures.

In the final stint in Bahrain though he made tough work of clearing Charles Leclerc and Russell on better tyres in the faster car, and had he been more decisive with his efforts I’m sure he’d have ended up second, something I think he realised as he was watching the highlights back in the cooldown room.

HIGHLIGHTS: Catch up on Piastri’s stellar run to victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix

He was reluctant to take a dive down the inside of his rivals into Turn 1, for fear of being re-passed into Turn 4, something we’ve seen a few times in the past. But this hesitant approach meant he had to get his rivals to compromise their line out of the opening corner and it was hard going for him to achieve that and get the move done into Turn 4.

After a lot of huffing and puffing, he eventually wore down Leclerc for a nice pass. But left with only one attempt on Russell, Norris got caught in two minds between attempting at Turn 1 and Turn 4. The end result was a half-hearted outside attempt at 1 that was doomed to fail, and meant he lost his last chance to attack with a bit of a whimper.

Lando was extremely self-critical in Bahrain as he faces genuine title pressures and a team mate who is really stepping up to the plate. Sometimes it seems like he adds more pressure onto his shoulders with his unnecessarily harsh critiques, and last weekend it seemed that pressure got to him a bit.

There’s an awfully long way to go in this championship and he still leads the way, so it’ll be important for him to reset as soon as he can and get back to his best to get some momentum back on his side.

F1 NATION: ‘A champion is cooking’ and why Norris vs Piastri is ‘fire and ice’ – it’s our Bahrain GP review with Mark Webber