Stella speaks out on Norris' confidence in qualifying: "You need to be ahead of the car"

Andrea Stella has continued to defend Lando Norris as he goes through a tough spell of qualifying performances, but he also tells his driver that he needs to think and be "ahead of the car".

Norris's last two qualifying performances have been disappointing behind the wheel of the fast McLaren, with a P6 at the Bahrain Grand Prix then backed up by a P10 at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, with the 25-year-old crashing out at the beginning of Q3.

After the session, Norris said that he "let himself and the team down" with his crash to end his Saturday session, and even with a fine recovery drive that saw him take P4, he lost his championship lead to Oscar Piastri after he took victory around the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.

Stella highlights the challenges each driver has behind the wheel of these F1 cars

After the session in the Jeddah paddock, while speaking to several media sources, including GPblog, Stella was asked whether Norris didn't currently have the confidence compared to others.

"Look, you talk about confidence," the Italian stated by saying. "Confidence is definitely one of the fundamental elements through which you drive in a very natural way, as we said before, almost a subconscious way, I would say.

"But to have this kind of approach from a driver's point of view, you almost need to be ahead of the car, because if you wait for the response of the car, then you're going to be too late, considering the speed of these cars, like I said before.

"I think to some extent, I don't think, in broadcasting, we are giving the sense of how fast this generation of cars is in 2025 and the demand for the drivers," continued the McLaren team boss.

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Stella continued on by debriefing the qualifying session from Jeddah, believing that a lack of confidence was not what causeed Norris to end up in the barriers.

"I think what we talk about is that there is a very tight field. In Q2, there were four drivers, Lando, Oscar, [George] Russell and Verstappen, in one-tenth of a second. The gap between Oscar and Verstappen in Q2 was 16 milliseconds, and then it was 10 milliseconds in Q3. Lando was actually leading Q2, but I think he realised that he needed to find a bit of performance in Q3.

"I don't think it has to do with the driver getting confidence. I think it just has to do with the driver's thinking, ‘I push one meter later with the braking, or go one kph faster mid-corner. At some stage, the car does a thing that I'm not anticipating, and now I'm becoming a bit of a passenger.’ And especially at this track in which, basically, it's very unforgiving if you are one meter off what is the normal racing line.

"So I think, like I said before, it's about getting the car to do what the drivers expect, and in particular for Lando," concluded Stella.