Norris working with mind coach to help confidence struggles

Lando Norris has revealed he has been working with a mind coach to help overcome struggles with self-confidence during his racing career, but feels “much more chilled” after a strong start to life in Formula 1.

Norris has scored points in two of his first four F1 starts with McLaren this year, helping lift the team to fourth place in the constructors’ championship.

The F1 rookie has already ticked off a number of important achievements in his debut season, such as reaching Q3 and recording points finishes, helping ease some of the early nerves he felt at the start of the year.

“If I look back at Australia and then going into Bahrain, how nervous I was going into Australia, and in how some ways scared I was of what was going to happen - I didn’t know what was going to happen, basically,” Norris said on Thursday in Spain.

“I didn’t know if I was going to do a good job or a bad job. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself. But doing as well as I did in Australia, and obviously not just doing well, but from other people - from the bosses, from the engineers, from whoever - having them say well done and good job obviously brings a lot of confidence.”

Norris said that struggles with confidence had occurred in the early part of his previous seasons in Formula 2 and Formula 3, but particularly when he made the step up to F1 earlier this year.

“It’s not like I’m nervous of people seeing what I can or can’t do on camera or on TV or anything, or what my engineers think. I think it was more of a personal thing,” Norris said

“How you go about testing is just very different to just being in the situation of qualifying, having to go out, having to nail the lap. In testing, you make a mistake, you just say ‘OK we’ll have another go’ instead of it being the only chance you get.

“I think a bit of it is not having the most confidence in myself, just in general. It’s just something I kind of struggled with, not in every season, but Formula 1 mainly and in F2, a bit in F3. Just in general, it’s something I suffered with at the beginning of a season.

“It’s something I have worked on. I have someone I see to help with those situations, to put myself in a better place. So it’s definitely something I’ve already worked on and will continue to work on.

“But at the same time, it’s something that will also just come naturally with having more races and having results like I have done. And obviously as well, people telling me if I’ve done a good or a bad job.”

Norris said he felt McLaren was giving him plenty of support in the early part of the season, adding he felt he was benefitting from the extra focus given his rookie status.

“I think they’ve gone out of their way this year,” Norris said.

“From what I’ve seen, it seems like they’ve put more effort or more work into trying to help me as a driver, or the drivers, to be more prepared, to be in a better situation going into every race.

“Having the support from everyone, the bosses, whoever within the team, definitely makes it much easier for me as a driver.”