Tag: Lando Norris

Lando Norris is in uncharted territory. By winning the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, he is now leading the drivers’ championship for the first time in his Formula 1 career.

It brings to an end a remarkable run of 1,029 days since the last time a driver other than Max Verstappen was top of the standings, with the Dutchman having taken over from Charles Leclerc at the Spanish Grand Prix in May 2022, and never been headed until today.

But Norris is also dealing with the pressure that comes with the tag of drivers’ championship favorite, and leading from the front when he is expected to. On paper, converting pole position into a victory in Melbourne looks like a simple outcome in the record books, but it’s the manner of the win that Norris was so proud of as he reflecting on a chaotic Sunday.

“To start the season off like this – to start it off with a win is good enough, but to do it in such a stressful race, one where it’s so easy to make a mistake, so easy to to ruin everything so quickly, it can all have gone wrong within a second,” Norris said.

“Any second of the race, you (can) lock up, you hit the white line wrong, you have a big snap, it was just very, very difficult at times to just not go into a wall or a tire barrier somewhere. So that’s a big enough challenge, but then when you have got the weather changing and the track conditions changing, knowing when to make the correct decision to change onto a slick tire and stay out on the inter tire, and then even more when I’ve got Max behind me and Oscar [Piastri] behind me, it’s stressful.

“But I guess it’s what makes it rewarding, it makes it such a nice win. Difficult, a lot of tough moments, but I guess that’s what makes it sweeter.

“We worked a lot over the winter to prepare for a race like this, because it’s where we threw away a lot of opportunities last season. It was Canada, (and) Silverstone, where we were not the best at preparing and knowing how decisive we’ve got to be. And today we were very, very decisive, calling to box five meters before I boxed, but it was the right call in the end, and that won us the race. So stressful, but rewarding.”

Norris ticked off a number of milestones during the race weekend at Albert Park that can seem small but are far from insignificant. One of those was taking pole position with his final lap, overcoming an error that led to his first attempt getting deleted, and the next was getting a clean launch off the line in the wet to lead the opening lap once again.

That was a repeat of what he had managed to achieve in Abu Dhabi last time out, and while there wasn’t the pressure of a constructors’ title on the line on Sunday, there were wet conditions and the looming specter of Verstappen in his mirrors.

Verstappen had cleared Piastri at the start but didn’t have the pace to keep up with the McLarens as the track dried. Come the final stages, though, the defending champion had made all of the right calls to put himself right on Norris’ gearbox for a late safety car restart – the third that Norris handled well – and in with a shot of an unexpected victory.

And that’s when the pressure was really on. Red Bull knew there was a chance to try and expose what it has suggested is a potential weakness in Norris’ armor, specifically his ability to handle the big moments.

“[Verstappen] very nearly nicked it at the end there,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said. “I think Lando looked like he tightened up a little bit at the end of the race. He made a mistake at Turn 6, went half off the track and that gave Max a little bit of a run at a track that’s very difficult to overtake, and then the next lap he got another run.”

In the end, those were the only two looks Verstappen got, as Norris held him off by 0.8s to take the win. But while the McLaren driver acknowledged his error, he pointed to teamwork from McLaren in helping him stay focused, and he believes it was the track layout that prevented him pulling clear again.

“I knew I was going to struggle a bit just because I put the inter on two laps prior to him and with half the track still being dry, I pushed and even the high speed was dry, so I kind of destroyed my tires a little bit.

“The front tires, you could see the rubber was already rolling over on the edges, so I knew my pace advantage was not going to be as much as it was at the beginning of the race.

“At the very beginning of the race, when it was wettest, Max was just as quick as us. As it dried, we got a lot quicker and then the Red Bull started to struggle. So I knew Max would be quick in those last few laps and I knew he would risk a bit more because there’s only about five, six, seven laps to go.

“I did make a mistake in Turn 6, where I just put a wheel in the gravel. I just lost all my momentum and drive, and Max got to within DRS and DRS really managed to help him stay there.

“It’s just tough because it’s not so much just the pressure of him being there, but it was the pressure of if I put a wheel too close to a white line on an entry, I’m off. If I clip the curve wrong in six on the inside, I’m off. If I dip a wheel in the gravel, I get a bad run and he’s past.

“There’s so many little things that can go wrong, so just trying to concentrate on not locking, not rear locking, not hitting the curbs wrong, but still trying to go quicker than you’ve ever gone because you know a guy’s trying to do the same behind you.

“It was stressful. I’m not going to lie about that. I was checking my mirrors a good amount and things like that, but even Will [Joseph, race engineer] came on the radio to me and told me just to chill out a little bit.

“He knows and Jarv [Andrew Jarvis] as well, my racing performance engineer, knows very quickly from my driving when I’m pushing a bit too much, when I’m pushing entries too much and those kind of things. They’re very quick to jump on and say, ‘Do this better,’ or ‘Watch out for that,’ because they know what I do and what I struggle with, especially in a situation like that.

“But that situation was new for me. I’ve not ever led a race with five laps to go with Max behind me trying to put me under pressure and in these conditions. Maybe Max has had that a few times. He’s raced against Lewis [Hamilton] a lot and he can just deal with that probably better than I can.

“For me, it was a new situation, so it was kind of see how it goes when I get there. So happy that I just got through it and stayed calm, and it’s somewhere I improved on from last year.”

It wasn’t perfect – as Piastri’s lost podium proves – but it was a race that McLaren and Norris could well have failed to take victory from last season. And Verstappen’s threat shows it was an improvement that the team needed to make if it is to give itself the best chance of success on both fronts this year.

When Lando Norris was facing the media on Thursday at Albert Park, he was in a relatively combative mood.

The early championship favorite was berating reports that were claiming McLaren clearly has the fastest car to start the year based on pre-season testing’s lap times. Norris said he was “quite surprised so many people are so short-sighted” to come to such a conclusion, and then stated Ferrari would catch a few out by being extremely quick in Melbourne.

For much of the time after he made those comments, Norris was being proven right. The Friday practice lap times – both on low fuel and high fuel – suggested Ferrari was close to McLaren, and that Mercedes wasn’t a million miles away either. Red Bull was a little more up and down, but then appeared to make a step forward in FP3 to join the party.

And as Q1 wrapped up, it definitely looked like Norris would be vindicated. 0.662s covered the top 17 cars in the first part of qualifying, and nine of the ten teams. Only Haas couldn’t make it a full house, as it is enduring a challenging weekend on Oliver Bearman’s side of the garage – the Briton failing to set a time – and ended up 1.2s off with Ocon.

Norris’ prediction looked ever-more solid as Q2 came and went and the first runs of Q3 wrapped up, but even though McLaren still held the tag of favorite for pole position it wasn’t by a major margin.

For Norris to then stick lead a front-row lock-out by the best part of 0.4s from the first non-McLaren car – Max Verstappen’s Red Bull – and over 0.7s to the lead Ferrari, was a throwback to the pre-season expectations rather than the post-practice ones.

“I expected more (from Ferrari),” Norris said. “They’ve been just as quick as us all weekend. We definitely came into qualifying expecting a fight with Ferrari, although Max was not far behind, he said he was a bit surprised to be up here. I think we expected more from Ferrari.

“People are quick to judge, ‘Oh he’s there on the timesheets, they’re slower, the car isn’t good.’ But it’s difficult out there to put a lap together. When you see how close one tenth can be it can easily be three or four positions.

“A tenth is easily within most drivers every lap, especially on a track like this. It’s about commitment, pushing that little more on the final lap, getting off the brakes, committing to corners, pushing track limits. There’s a tenth in most people. Sometimes two-tenths in taking those risks. I felt I still took a good amount of risks in the final lap to get pole.

“But I did expect Ferrari to be quicker. Whether that’s because they didn’t put good laps in or struggled more with the car, I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. We all expected Ferrari to be quicker because they have been just as quick as us all weekend. So it’s more that they just didn’t perform in qualifying for whatever reason.”

The end result of a second row of Verstappen and George Russell is enticing given their beef towards the end of last season, and then the surprise performances from Yuki Tsunoda and Alex Albon to secure fifth and sixth also went down well. But to see Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in seventh and eighth respectively was not in the script.

As much as Norris can be accused of trying to downplay McLaren’s advantage even after another example that points to it being a step ahead of its rivals, Leclerc suggests he might be right that qualifying didn’t paint an accurate picture.

“As soon as we started to push the car more and more and more, we found more and more and more inconsistency, which was a bit of a shame,” Leclerc said. “We lost a little bit of the pace throughout qualifying.

“Q1 we were good, Q2 a little bit less good, and Q3 we had to push a lot to try and make the lap time. But we didn’t really follow the track for some reason, so we’ve got to look into it, and maximize tomorrow.

“I think we’ve lost relative competitiveness compared to yesterday, which we know what we’ve changed, so we’ll have to look into it for sure. But other than that, I don’t know.

“As I’ve said many times before coming here, it’s only the first race of the season, and it’s only a starting point. It’s going to be a very long season. We’ve just got to stay calm, maximize points tomorrow, whatever that may be, and work from there.

“I think this car has a lot of potential, but for now we don’t seem to be in the right window. So we’ve got to find it.”

Leclerc was more downbeat of the two Ferrari drivers, despite Hamilton being almost 0.9s slower than Norris. For the new addition, this weekend is a constant learning curve and Hamilton has been so energized by his new challenge that he gives off the impression of relishing the opportunity to truly get stuck into tackling the hurdles ahead of him.

“It’s been a lot slower process for me to really build confidence in the car,” Hamilton admitted. “If you look at the high speed everywhere, I’ve been down all weekend. Charles just had it from the get go. From the minute he went out, he knew what the car does.

“For me, I was just building up to that through the weekend. I think I got a lot closer towards it. To be that close to Charles in my first qualifying session in the car against a great qualifier is [not bad].”

Sunday’s weather forecast could see a wet race that would usually be music to Hamilton’s ears given his starting spot, but he admits he still needs to learn so much about how his car operates ℃ including steering wheel switches in the wet – that he doesn’t see it as the same opportunity as usual.

But whether the rain arrives or not, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella expects Ferrari to still be a threat in race trim, and throughout this season.

“I am certainly surprised by the gap between McLaren and Ferrari,” Stella said. “But I would say more, I just don’t take that gap at face value.

“I am sure the potential of the red car is higher than for some reasons was possible to exploit today. I think we have seen that – until possibly qualifying – in every single session, even in Bahrain. So we are very realistic that Ferrari is definitely one of the main contenders for here, even if tomorrow we will see which condition we will be racing.”

Competitive sessions are the only moments that can provide true answers, and the first one of the season has done nothing to help McLaren shake off a clear favorite’s tag. But for all the talk of Ferrari’s potential, having Verstappen directly behind the two McLarens and a significant chance of rain for Sunday also serves up a combination to disrupt its strong start so far.

“For me the only thing I can say about Max in wet conditions is that he is mega,” Stella added. “So I think he has shown what quality he is able to express when the conditions are prohibitive, like in the wet.

“So we know that despite today we had a good result, in wet conditions Max can be a significant threat.