McLaren reveals surprising truth about Norris' 'calming kick' after pole in Austin

McLaren has revealed that Lando Norris' radio message before his pole lap at the United States Grand Prix wasn't actually his race engineer's idea.

On his out lap in the third quarter, Norris engineer Will Joseph told the Brit to “trust the car, don't overload it (steering and braking at the same time) and the lap time will come,” after a tough weekend up to that point, with Max Verstappen is clearly the better of the two title protagonists.

Norris had lost ground in the title race just hours earlier after Verstappen's victory in the sprint saw him finish third, meaning the points gap grew to 54 points with 172 still up for grabs, but Norris put in a lap good enough for the Pole was, although he was assisted in George Russell's crash ending the session early.

When team boss Andrea Stella reflected on the radio call that Norris himself felt he needed to be “reassured”, he revealed that the idea for it did not come from Joseph.

“I think it was an encouraging kick,” Stella told the media RacingNews365.

“We heard Will because he is the one talking to the driver, but in this case Will was actually conveying the message that Andrew Jarvis, the performance engineer, had conveyed to him.”

“The driver, the race engineer and the performance engineer work very, very closely together and develop a language, short references that can be passed on quickly, even when preparing for a qualifying lap.”

“They include content that is technical, stimulating and can sometimes be calming.

“I think this message had those three elements in one message because it was about how you approach driving.

“It was reassuring because we knew that this power is in the car if you don't overdo what you want to achieve – and it was technical because it was also related to some settings on the car that we adjusted during the sprint had.” to qualifying.”