What's 'rattled' Lando Norris? Revealing radio message analysed

Lando Norris cut a frustrated figure after Friday practice at the Singapore Grand Prix.

The Briton was 0.483 seconds slower than McLaren teammate and title rival Oscar Piastri, who set the pace in an eventful and disrupted second practice in Singapore.

Norris was seen having several moments as he tried to improve his time in the closing stages of the session, having been hit by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in the pitlane in an incident which broke his front wing.

A fascinating radio exchange between Norris and his race engineer Will Joseph prompted intrigue into his state of mind, with Norris sounding unhappy with his performance during FP2.

When Joseph suggested that he “can probably make the car quicker if we do laps without DRS now”, Norris snapped back: "But my car is not half a second off, is it? My driving is half a second off.”

Norris was left rueing what he felt had been a “bad day” in Singapore.

“Just a difficult day for me, not feeling too great with the car,” Norris summarised.

“Missing all of the feelings I had here last year, so plenty of things to work on. Just a bad day.

“Oscar is quick, so I’ve got nothing to complain about, bar just not doing a good job.”

What led to Lando Norris's frustration? 

Norris’s clash with Leclerc and deficit to teammate Piastri have been pinpointed as the two main causes of his frustration.

“He’s not happy,” former F1 driver and Sky Sports pundit Anthony Davidson noted during second practice.

“I would say he’s not happy with the car - and I would say Lando is quite guilty of this - he’s quick to blame himself before looking at the car or the data.

“He feels like he can take it on his own shoulders and deliver, which a lot of the time he can, he’s a fantastic driver. But I feel like in that moment he wasn’t necessarily working well with his engineer to just make life easier for himself.

"Maybe he was a bit rattled from what happened in the pit lane. It can knock you off guard but you have to reset yourself.

“I feel like he got a bit flustered from that moment and then your teammate goes and sets the fastest time which costs you even more.

“You think ‘I need to dig deeper, I need to push harder and get a better lap time to make myself feel more confident going into tomorrow’. Then he kind of refused to follow the programme.”

2009 F1 world champion and fellow Sky Sports pundit Jenson Button said the pit lane collision “definitely isn’t going to help”.

“But I think also because he came here so confident after last year and he was very strong through FP1,” Button explained.

“When you see you are half a second down to your teammate you will question yourself a little bit.”

Speaking after the session, Button added: “He had a lot of little moments out on track and he just couldn’t get that lap together.

“We saw at Turn 5 and also Turn 7, just pushing that little bit too hard, not getting the apex and running wide and it costs a couple of tenths every time you do that.

“He’s just not quite got it together. He will get it together and come back tomorrow, I’m sure of it. It’s just frustrating to see, because we know how good Lando is.”