Norris on rare engineer message before Austin pole: “A little kick never hurts”

Norris explains why his confidence in the McLaren could use a lift ahead of his pole-winning qualifying run

Lando Norris has revealed why his Formula 1 race engineer made a rare intervention on the team radio before his pole lap for the United Stated Grand Prix.

Norris took a sixth pole of 2024 at the Circuit of the Americas thanks to narrowly beating title rival Max Verstappen after the first of two planned runs in the Q3 shootout.

A late yellow flag for George Russell’s crashed Mercedes prevented anyone else from setting another lap, denying Verstappen and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz a chance to snatch pole away from the McLaren driver.

Norris acknowledged his luck, having set what he felt was the best lap of his career on a weekend where McLaren hasn’t been as competitive as hoped.

He also admitted he hadn’t been at all confident in the car heading into the pole-deciding shootout, which prompted his race engineer Will Joseph to give a rare message of encouragement as his driver ventured onto the track.

In a message that was picked up by the world feed, Joseph told Norris to “trust the car” as the “lap time will come” while also giving him a technical reminder about his driving.

“It’s a very rare thing,” Norris said. “He knows I don’t like that kind of stuff normally. It’s just because I said after Q2 I was not confident at all in the car.

“I was bouncing everywhere and I just lacked confidence at that point to put a good lap together. And I’d been struggling in Turn 1, been struggling in Turn 12. But we were there or thereabouts.

“It was more just: ‘Let’s get a good lap in and be there’. So that’s what I did.

“Whether or not what I did was because of Will’s comments, I’d probably say no, otherwise I’ll boost his ego too much… But I probably needed it a little bit just because I was struggling a lot with the car and we’ve been a bit off this weekend. A little kick never hurts sometimes.”

Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, Will Joseph, Race Engineer, McLaren F1 Team, on the grid

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

Team principal Andrea Stella explained Joseph’s message originated from Norris’ performance engineer and must have been reassuring at the time.

“We hear Will, because Will is the one talking to the driver, but actually in this case, Will conveyed the message that was provided to him by Andrew Jarvis, who is the performance engineer,” Stella said.

“The driver, the race engineer and the performance engineer and some of the others, they work very, very closely [to] develop a language with quick references that can be passed rapidly, even as you prepare a qualifying lap.

“They include content that is technical, is driving [related] and sometimes is even kind of reassuring, and that message added these three elements in a single message, because it had to do with how to approach the driving.

“It was reassuring, because we knew that there’s performance in the car if you don’t overcook what you’re trying to achieve. And it is technical, because it is related also to some of the settings of the car that we had adjusted from the sprint into qualifying.”