Lance Stroll, Lando Norris, Shanghai International Circuit, 2025

Lando Norris says his performance at the Chinese and Canadian grand prix weekends cost him most to his team mate in their championship fight.

He went into the summer break nine points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri. But Norris admitted he could have been in a stronger position if he hadn’t cost himself points on two occasions early in the year.

“Could I have, at times, made maybe better decisions, I think so,” said Norris. “If I had that thought a little bit more in my head at the time, probably the main one was China sprint qualifying.

“I think my lap was good enough for pole until the final hairpin where I locked up. If I’d had that thought probably just before braking – ‘it’s a long season, don’t try and be a hero’ – then I wouldn’t have finished it.”

Norris qualified sixth for that race, three places behind his team mate. While Piastri went on to finish second Norris made a poor start and was only able to salvage one point by passing Lance Stroll with three laps to go. “I lost eight points there,” he said.

He also pointed to his late-race collision with Piastri in the Canadian Grand Prix, which remains the only time all year either McLaren driver has failed to score.

“If I go back to Canada, if I could rerun that and just be a little bit smarter and not take so much risk, could I have not lost quite a few points there? Yes,” he said.

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However Norris said he is trying not to dwell too much on his past mistakes. “I wouldn’t say I regret those moments. Do I wish it changed and do I wish it was better? Do I wish I could maybe do it again? Yeah, but at the same time I don’t regret probably making those decisions at the time because that’s me, that’s life, and that’s the way it goes.

“Sometimes it goes your way and you get lucky, sometimes it goes the other way and you don’t make the best decisions, but those are also the times you often learn the most and help yourself more for the future. So I think for me and my life I would say I live it more by not regretting what I’ve done, more trying to learn and improve from that point onwards.”

Norris said he has felt more at ease with McLaren’s car in recent races and his results have improved because of that.

“I went through some harder times at the beginning of the year. I had a good start but there were some tricky moments and we worked on quite a bit, me from my side and the team from their side, to improve and kind of get a little bit back on-track. And we did that, so it was nice to see some of those results come back my way.

“But there was, still is, always will be, more things to improve on and try and get stronger at. And that’s what Formula 1 is at the end of the day.

“So I feel good, I feel ready to go again. Ready for probably a long, tricky, challenging second part of the season, but all for good reasons.”

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