Stella positive hugely critical Norris will "adapt" through a "temporary qualifying phase"

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes that Lando Norris will "adapt" and work through what he called a "temporary qualifying phase" at the Bahrain Grand Prix.

The Brit could only qualify P6 around the Bahrain International Circuit despite showing superb pace throughout the rest of Saturday's session, finishing four-tenths off his teammate Oscar Piastri, who took P1 ahead of George Russell and Charles Leclerc in P2 and P3, respectively, when the chequered flag fell.

Afterwards, Norris said he was "clueless" about what he needs to do to find more pace in the MCL39, continuing to say that he "can't figure out" the issues that he is currently having during qualifying.

Stella not worried about Norris's Q3 issues

After that result and those self-critical comments from Norris, Stella backed up his driver by defending his comments and believing more is to come during Sunday's race.

"As you say, Lando is often quite self-critical and transparent in a way, which is a stylistic aspect," the Italian team boss said to several media sources, including GPblog.

"There are, I'm sure, drivers which are equally self-critical, but they keep it for themselves, and they put a little bit of a screen between them and the rest of the world. Lando doesn't have this characteristic. He's very naturally honest, I would say, and therefore, he becomes visible when he's disappointed or when he's self-questioning.

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"I think in relation to the performance, Lando is a very fast driver, a naturally fast driver with an incredible race craft, and even now that he's been struggling to put together laps in Q3, actually during the weekend he shows this speed," continued a positive Stella.

"In Q1, we saw immediately faster times, and in the FP1 session, he pretty much dominated the session. I think that before here, in pretty much every Q2 session, he was the fastest. So it's more a phase, I think, when it comes to Q3 and putting together the lap that hasn't worked very well recently, but this is a short phase."

Stella "looking forward" to Norris's Sunday in Bahrain

Despite starting far further back down the grid than he potentially should have been, there is still a lot of excitement and expectation from Stella surrounding his driver, knowing what Norris is capable of on a Sunday.

"We are talking about the driver that has led the journey of McLaren to the front, together with Oscar, to deliver us the world championship after 26 years. And it's just now in this temporary phase in which, while pushing the car to the limit, there's a few things that don't go exactly as he expects. And when you go for the extra tenth of a second in Q3, this becomes more visible.

"We understand what it is; it will just require a bit of adaptation from Lando himself and some adaptations from the team. But I think the understanding is good, and we are very optimistic that this will be resolved.

"And also we have to say that this doesn't affect the race pace. We look forward to tomorrow. I think already in practice Lando has already shown a very strong lap in the race run simulations. So I'm really looking forward to seeing Lando finding his way back to the front of the pack," concluded Stella.