What McLaren thinks caused Norris’ F1 Mexico GP dominance

Lando Norris’ dominance of the 2025 Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix stemmed from the track suiting his driving style, reckons McLaren team boss Andrea Stella. 

The long-time McLaren racer never lost position to win from pole on Sunday at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, meaning he took the F1 2025 championship lead with four rounds remaining. 

That is because erstwhile leader Oscar Piastri only finished fifth in the sister McLaren, as the Australian struggled to cope with the high-altitude, low-grip nature of the Mexico circuit.

It causes the cars to slide a lot through corners and Stella said this suited Norris, who leads Piastri by a point having reclaimed a championship lead that he lost at April’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

“These special low-grip conditions, they fit perfectly,” said Stella of Norris, who ended McLaren’s five-race winless streak. “It’s a natural way of extracting lap time, which is almost opposite to Oscar’s characteristics. 

“It will just strengthen Lando’s confidence and it will be important for the final four races. But I think both Lando and Oscar go into the final four races with reasons to be confident. 

“I think the team also goes into the final four races with more understanding of how to extract performance from the car consistently, because over the last few races before Mexico, at times, we have left some performance in the garage.”

This marks a far cry from the rest of the year, as Norris had repeatedly stated his struggles to push the MCL39 to its limit. That has particularly been seen in qualifying, as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen holds the most pole positions this year with seven, compared to five for both McLaren drivers.

But a breakthrough moment came in a post-Singapore debrief just two rounds before Mexico, as McLaren and Norris sought to find out how the MCL39 could be set up more to his liking.

It eventually led to the 10th grand prix victory of the 25-year-old’s career. Mexico was also the most statistically dominant win of any driver since Verstappen in Hungary two years ago, as Norris finished 30s ahead of runner-up Charles Leclerc — four seconds shy of the Dutchman’s winning margin in Budapest. 

Stella was not surprised by Norris’ performance though, given he has shown similar pace in the past having won from pole on seven occasions now. 

“When we look at Lando’s recent years, we have seen a weekend with this level of dominance also in some other venues,” said Stella. “Last year, we saw it in Zandvoort, we saw it in Singapore. So, it’s not the first time, I think, that Lando exhibits performances at this level.

“Here [in Mexico], he was very convincing. I think he was just essentially fastest in every single session. He was able to capitalise on the performance and the strength of the car.”

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— The Autosport.com Team