RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Lando Norris feels he is performing better both on and off the track in Formula 1 this year compared to his title-winning 2025 campaign, fresh off back-to-back wins for McLaren .
The reigning F1 world champion has taken pole and victory in the last two rounds in Hungary and Zandvoort to breathe fresh life into a difficult title defence, as McLaren made a slow start to the new regulations era.
With Norris fourth in the standings and still 83 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli , talk of a title fight has been quelled so far, but from his personal performance levels the British driver feels he’s operating better than during his title-winning season.
“I was driving at a high level the second half of last year. It’s tough to say [if I’m driving at my highest level], but I do think it’s a trickier car to drive this year in some ways,” Norris said. “I think you can see that because the gaps between team-mates are often bigger this year, I would say, than it was last year. But I do believe so.
“I do believe I’m able to understand situations better, to understand the car in a better way. It’s still just horrible to drive, but I’m doing a better job at just understanding this, relaying this to my team, figuring stuff out.
“So, it’s not just I’m driving better on track. I’m certainly eliminating my weaknesses on track, and I don’t have so many, but it’s also how I work off the track. And for me, yesterday to today is a perfect example of [how] the work we put in overnight transformed our race and gave me the opportunity to win.
“So, the work we put in away from the track is certainly a huge part of that.”
Lando Norris, McLaren
Lando Norris, McLaren
Norris said overnight work between the sprint race and grand prix in Zandvoort was a good example of his improvements off the track, having focused with his McLaren engineers to find gains after he drifted to third place in the Saturday sprint race.
When asked where he ranks his 13th grand prix victory, Norris replied: “Pretty high just from a point of very well fought in many ways. More than that is the turnaround from yesterday to today.
“I was pretty disappointed yesterday. It kind of took a little bit of the fire out of me, seeing how much we struggled in the sprint. I know it’s just a sprint, but every point matters and we just really didn’t have the pace. I didn’t have that something that gave me life inside the car.
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“Last night we worked very, very hard. I spent a lot of time with my engineers to kind of understand what we could do better today, how to push more, save the tyres more, how to do everything in a better way than I’ve done and better than everyone else. And I certainly believe I did that today.
“So apart from the start, it was a little bit of a mix of races because the beginning in the first stint was pretty bad and kind of reminded me of yesterday. But we put the hard tyres on and things came alive and the race really started to come back to me.”
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