Lando Norris – one of the brightest talents in the world of motorsport and a popular figure on and off the track. After four unsuccessful seasons in Formula 1, Norris is closer to winning his first title with McLaren than he ever has been. Unfortunately for him, there are two components that will ruin his dreams of becoming World Champion: The lack of support from his own team and, current World Champion Max Verstappen.
From a mathematical point of view, Norris is indeed involved in the title race against rival Verstappen, the three-time World Champion driving for Red Bull Racing.
However, from a more realistic perspective, it is not looking good for the Englishman. After the Mexican Grand Prix, he currently stands 47 points behind Verstappen with just four races left in the season.
Norris will only win the Drivers Championship if he outscores Verstappen by a minimum of 12 points per race weekend. He would then be one point ahead after the final race in Abu Dhabi, but if his team continues to fail him, his slim chance will vanish before the season finale.
With the title fight intensifying, the drivers have begun to race each other harder, at last, during the Mexican Grand Prix, where Verstappen received two 10-second penalties for forcing Norris off the track early in the race. While this incident helped Norris gain 10 points on the current champion, Carlos Sainz’s pace in the Ferrari was too fast resulting in Norris coming second and missing out on seven important points.
While McLaren dominated the grid before the summer break, they have not been able to perform well enough afterwards, as the team went from celebrating win after win to coming second as their best post-break result. It seems like Norris’ momentum of being the driver to watch out for has been slipping away due to his inconsistent performances and the team’s inadequate development throughout the season. They were good from the get-go but failed to further develop their car as much as other teams. Especially Ferrari and Red Bull are dangerously close to stealing the outstanding Constructors Championship from McLaren.
With the car that McLaren brought to the table after their upgrades in Miami, where Norris achieved his maiden win in Formula 1, outscoring Verstappen by 12 points each race was possible, but with their current car, McLaren rather needs to focus on not losing the Constructors Championship. Ferrari has been extremely competitive over the past two race weekends, passing Red Bull in the Constructors title. McLaren’s lead has now shrunk to 29 points, and perhaps this is the real fight to keep an eye on.
Despite Red Bull’s improvements over the season, they are not involved in the direct title fight as they currently only have one competitive driver on their team: Verstappen. Teammate Sergio Perez has struggled to keep up with him throughout the entire season, and just as things started to look a little bit better for the Mexican with a P7 in Austin, his home Grand Prix turned out to be a total disaster – P18 in Qualifying and an unsuccessful recovery drive to P17 in the race.
With Red Bull out of the equation for now, their focus lies in winning the Drivers Championship with Verstappen. This is different for McLaren, as they have struggled to show Norris their full support this season due to unreasonably prioritising Oscar Piastri, who does not appear to be a Championship contender this year. For example, due to team orders in Hungary, Norris had to hand over the win to his teammate despite having a faster pace.
In a sport where every point counts, surrendering yet another seven points in just one race will inevitably lead to losing the Championship along the way. Up until the summer break, McLaren have explicitly stated their aim to provide equal opportunities for both drivers to perform well and have prided themselves on having two first drivers. However, with behaviours like those in Hungary, it is debatable whether a Championship can be won that way.
After the summer break, McLaren issued a statement to the BBC in which team principal Andrea Stella said: “We [will] bias our support to Lando, but we want to do it without too much compromise on our principles.”
What exactly Stella meant by the ‘principles’ is unclear, but regardless, it seems like this decision has come too late. In general, the way McLaren have been acting throughout the season and the decisions they made regarding their drivers suggest that their priority was, is, and will be to win the Constructors Championship for the first time since 1998.
Norris has recently shared that he tends to put a lot of pressure on himself and is very self-critical which could explain his inconsistency in races. Ever since his maiden win in Miami, it has become clear to fans that any position other than first is no longer enough for him and that even after a P2, he would only talk about what went wrong. For Norris, who has been in Formula 1 for five years, this is the first season where his team has been competitive enough to win something. Therefore, the pressure of being the one to beat is new to him, and while this is a good feeling, it can also be challenging to keep a clear head in these situations – a blessing in disguise.
Norris achieved a lot this year: his first win, first Championship battle, the most pole positions in the season and while Norris has the talent, mindset, and potential to become a champion, this season will not be the one. Too many things have gone wrong for him and too many things would have to go his way in the next four races to somehow get past Verstappen. Despite decent individual and team performance, the questionable race strategies and pressure placed on him might have been too much, but regardless, he continues to be someone to watch out for again next year.