Lando Norris’ race engineer reveals their secret to “put demons to bed”

Lando Norris’ race engineer has shed light on how they overcome external pressures to deliver grand prix-winning drives.

Norris brilliantly won the F1 Singapore Grand Prix last time out, his third win of the season to edge closer to Max Verstappen at the summit of the drivers’ standings.

Notably in Singapore, Norris ended his hoodoo of losing leads on the first lap when starting from pole position.

But Will Joseph, who has been in Norris’ ear throughout his F1 rise, insists they never focused on that unwanted record.

“We don’t need to discuss those things,” Joseph told the F1 Nation podcast.

“We talk about strengths, we go through how our driving was on Friday, and where opportunities might be.

“We don’t need to dwell on things that other people say are a problem that we don’t necessarily see.

“In the factory we have reviewed race starts. We thought we’d find something special. But it wasn’t as bad as everyone was trying to make it out to be.

“We discuss the things that are in our control. And the results show.”

He added: “We put some demons to bed.

“People can no longer say we can’t get out of the first corner, we can’t lead on the first lap.

“We led start to finish and didn’t put a foot wrong.”

The only blemishes of an otherwise perfect weekend for the McLaren driver in Singapore was when he briefly touched the barriers.

Joseph revealed what the reaction was inside McLaren’s garage.

“When Lando said he hit the wall, we do our normal procedure to check over everything,” he said.

“What you’re trying to do is: have I got a puncture? Have I damaged the front wing?

“If you’ve damaged anything else, then there’s not much you can do about it. If you’ve damaged the front wing, you can stop and change it.

“You are trying to make that assessment quickly.

“The damage wasn’t severe enough to do anything.

“When we made the stop, we’d already decided that we didn’t need to do anything with the front wing.

“Did it affect performance? In a very small manner. When we look afterwards, it scuffed the data. Pressure was lost. But small, I’d say.”

Joseph summarised Norris’ Singapore win: “He did a fantastic job. From Lap 1, we’ve been on the pace. Lando demonstrated how quick he can be.

“We tried to take small steps to make the car quicker. He has been incredible.

“In the race we said there were two ways it might go - at the beginning it became clear we could push on and build a gap. “Neither one of us expected the gap to be so large.

“We cleared a Safety Car window then a pit stop window.

“The pace was phenomenal. We were surprised how much pace there was.”