Norris chooses to see glass half full: 'Still leading the championship'

Nevermind that teammate Oscar Piastri has ahd the measure of him, in terms of pace since the start of the season, with the Australian being hot on the heels of the Briton since Australia, and the fact his young teammate is currently leading him in wins, 2-1. For Norris, holding the championship lead is an indicator of a 'dream start' to the 2025 F1 season.

After saying he wanted a reset, following his P6 in qualifying in Bahrain, all Norris got in the end were three days. Nevertheless, as all athletes do, according to the Briton, he could not stop revisiting the complicated F1 weekend in Bahrain.

"For a lot of my [reset] time [I] was still thinking of the difficulties that I've been struggling with. But at the same time also, it's still been a very good start to the year," says Norris to media present in Jeddah, including GPblog.

However, it doesn't come naturally, the papaya driver adds. "I try to force myself to think of still what a success the start of the season has been. Yes, I know it could have been better, but still leading the championship after not being happy, after not feeling comfortable in the car, it's still a start to the year that I would have dreamed of before the season started."

Norris has seen many positives to his F1 season start, but him 'being himself' still gets in the way, he explains. "There's still a lot of me and being myself, [that] has been trying to figure out the issues, the struggles, the reasoning behind it all, which is the most difficult thing is trying to find the answers to things."

However, he hopes he can start mitigating the performance drops resulting from his struggles since this very F1 race weekend in Saudi Arabia. "I think we've started to figure out some things on where I struggle, why I struggle, the reasonings for these struggles, and already trying to implement things for this weekend. I'm trying to improve in some of those areas."

But it's still no all there, he clarifies: "So it's not like I want to come into this weekend and I'm full of confidence and I know that things are going to turn around. I still think there are things I'm going to be struggling with because certain things you cannot change at the minute."

Those things, are precisely what keep him from exploiting his dominat MCL39's full potential. "There are certain things that I'm able to maybe re-look into from an approach point of view, from a driving style point of view. Stuff which I've probably never had to think of necessarily before, it's just not my normal way of driving or thinking."

Ultimately, Norris has one immediate goal for Jeddah, but with an outlook on a long game. "It's also a weekend where I want to perform, I want to do well, but it's early on enough in the season where if I can try and work on some things here and improve in some areas, that will pay off in the longer run."