Lando Norris reveals unusual McLaren focus during Saudi Arabian practice

Lando Norris has explained how most of his Friday at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was not spent working on his McLaren.

Instead of focusing on setting up the MCL39, the British driver utilised the time to address not only his driving, but also himself.

Having scorned his poor qualifying in Bahrain, the 25-year-old conceded he needed a "big reset" in order to correct his on-track struggles, something he did before the weekend at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.

As the round kicked into gear, the five-time grand prix winner finished the first practice session second fastest, only behind the surprise effort of Pierre Gasly in the Alpine, before topping the second hour of running. Crucially, however, he beat Oscar Piastri in both.

"A pretty decent first day," Norris said, reflecting on the FP1 and FP2. "Always just feels chaotic around here, because it's so fast, a lot of walls, a lot of near misses.

"Today has really been a day of trying to be working on my driving, working on myself, more than probably trying to work on the car.

"I'm getting more and more confident, so I think a good start to the weekend. Productive, gaining confidence, gaining getting feelings, so from what I wanted to achieve today, I think I'm on the right track."

Confident not comfortable

Although Norris had the measure of his team-mate, there is little to separate the leading teams and drivers so far in Saudi Arabia.

There was only a tenth of a second between the pair in FP1 and less than two tenths later in the day. Charles Leclerc split them in the first session and Max Verstappen was on their heels in the second.

Therefore, does not feel "comfortable" with the Woking squad's advantage, despite feeling good so far.

"At the minute, I would say we feel confident, but the others are not far behind," he said. "We were hoping for a bigger gap than what we had today.

"We know we're fast, we know we have a great car, but certainly not comfortable. Not as comfortable as what we would like, so. Nothing more than that, keep our heads down, keep focusing on ourselves and see what we can do."