When Lando Norris crossed the start/finish line at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez during qualifying for the Mexico City Grand Prix to secure pole position, he had no idea his lap time had obliterated Charles Leclerc's by nearly three-tenths of a second.
That was because the McLaren driver no longer displays lap time information on the steering wheel of his MCL39 — including the delta to the fastest lap set.
After the opening round of Q3 push laps, the advantage belonged to the Monegasque driver. But Leclerc was powerless to stop Norris’s blistering response.
The Briton's 1:15.5 lap, compared to Leclerc's 1:15.8, not only earned him pole position but also paved the way for the most dominant grand prix triumph in more than two years.
Come Sunday, the 25-year-old stormed to victory, finishing over 30 seconds clear of the Ferrari driver to claim the 10th grand prix win of his F1 career.
In doing so, he reclaimed the lead of the drivers' championship from Oscar Piastri. With only four rounds remaining, Norris now holds a slender one-point advantage over his McLaren team-mate.
Reflecting on his decisive final qualifying run, Norris told media, including RacingNews365: "I don't have a delta, so I didn’t know if I was up, if I was down, if it was good, bad, whatever.
"There were a couple of little places where I thought I messed up a touch and didn't get the best exits, like out of [Turn] six, but the rest of it felt pretty decent.
"I was happy, but I thought I'd be more like a 15.9, 15.8. I thought if I'd get ahead of Charles, I'd be pretty happy.
"So when I saw 15.5 on my dash, it put a pretty big smile on my face because it was one of those laps which was — everything just came together in terms of feeling. It was very natural and similar to my lap in Monaco."
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Avoiding distraction
The Monaco Grand Prix — the eighth round of the season — saw Norris take his second pole position of the year, following a series of frustrating qualifying sessions.
Costly errors in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia had seen him relinquish the championship lead to Piastri, and his one-lap pace, once a strength, had started to look like a weakness.
A change was needed — even a small one. So, ahead of the trip to the principality, Norris made a subtle adjustment: he removed his lap time display from the dashboard.
It went largely unnoticed, but since then, his qualifying form has improved dramatically. The McLaren driver has claimed four pole positions in 13 rounds since that decision, compared to just one in the seven preceding races.
When asked about the absence of lap time data on his display, Norris explained that it had become a distraction.
"I’ve not had it since Monaco," he revealed. "I’ve never used the delta since, in qualifying. So... who knows if it would have helped me or made me worse?
"I think the thing when I don’t have it is, I push no matter what — no matter how the start of the lap was, no matter how any corner was.
"I guess it’s because you have no reference of maybe the overall lap time, you just always try and maximise every corner to the maximum.
"And yeah, otherwise sometimes I just stare at it too much, and that’s never the best thing. So yeah, it's just nice because normally when it goes well, it’s a pleasant surprise to see the lap time pop up when it’s as good as this one."
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