The Verstappen standard McLaren wants Norris to reach in F1 2024

Lando Norris ended 2023 having consolidated his status as one of the top four or five Formula 1 drivers, but also admitting: “I can do better.” In the context of a season of almost unprecedented perfection from Max Verstappen, the same could be said of any of Norris’s immediate rivals. Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and
George Russell – to list them in championship-finishing order – all made mistakes at one point or another last season. But, in the case of Norris, you could see his point.

On the one hand, his season was highly impressive. From the introduction of McLaren’s first major upgrade in Austria, Norris was the second-highest scoring driver of the season with 193 points, 34 more even than the second Red Bull driver Sergio Perez. Norris outscored Leclerc by 41 points despite his and Ferrari’s strong end to the season, and Hamilton by 61. But, at the same time, there was a strong sense of what might have been.

Verstappen was out of reach, and any criticism that Norris could have fought the Dutchman harder when the Red Bull was coming back through the field in Austin or Brazil was founded on a misunderstanding of the superiority of the most dominant car in history on race days. In those situations, Norris – like anyone else in 2023 – was literally helpless. Fighting Verstappen only risked chewing up his tyres and losing him race time to his real rivals.

Leaving Verstappen out of it, though, there were some high-profile mistakes from Norris. Most, but not all, in qualifying. In Qatar, he qualified 10th for the grand prix after track-limits transgressions on both his runs left him without a time in the final session. And he missed out on pole in the sprint race after another error let team-mate Oscar Piastri in for the place at the front of the grid. From there, it was Piastri who took McLaren’s only race win of 2023 as Norris fought back to third after a bad start.

In Mexico, further errors in the first qualifying session left him down in 17th. And in Abu Dhabi he made a mistake at Turn 13 on his single run in Q3, leaving him starting fifth when he should have been second, or perhaps – at a push – on pole ahead of Verstappen. And, earlier in the season, when McLaren was struggling, there was a very odd crash in qualifying when he hit the inside wall at the final corner in Saudi Arabia.

Mexico, in a way, provided a microcosm of this part of Norris’s season. He was understandably angry with himself after making a horlicks of qualifying. But his race performance was one
of the drives of the year, to the point that
team principal Andrea Stella called it a “kind
of masterpiece”, and likened it to Valencia
2012, when he was working with Alonso at
Ferrari and the Spaniard won from 11th on
the grid, arguably his greatest-ever victory in
his greatest-ever season.

It’s easy to understand, then, why Norris would sum up 2023 by saying: “It was clear there’s places I need to work on and places I didn’t always deliver as much as I should’ve done.”

His superb recovery from a qualifying disaster in Mexico was one of the drives of 2023, but Norris knows he needs to make such acts unnecessary this year

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Opportunities and knocks

Norris, like Leclerc, often falls into self-criticism when he has made costly mistakes such as these. Not for them the typical racing drivers’ excuses. They want to own up to their errors – own them, in fact – so they can learn from them.

“I care about doing a good job and trying
to deliver for the team,” Norris says. “It’s just
the way I work best. It’s the way I’m able to bounce back best.”

It’s valid to point out that the proof is in the pudding, so to speak – that it’s all very well
being self-critical, but what matters is delivering on that desire to improve. But his boss Stella
is not concerned.

"The game is so competitive that you need to be at the top consistently. That’s what makes the difference. It’s not really the top potential" Andrea Stella

The Italian, who has worked with Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen as well as Alonso, would not only have deserved F1’s team boss of the year award if it had one, for masterminding the squad’s vertiginous rise up the grid in 2023, but has also emerged as one of F1’s most thoughtful and insightful analysts. The two are almost certainly related.

“Definitely it was a strong season for Lando,” Stella says. “From Austria, he is the second highest scorer behind Max, so this reflects
the quality of the driving, the delivery he is capable of as an F1 driver which puts him at
the top of the grid.

“At the same time, opportunities are available. We have had some contacts with some of the walls, like the one in qualifying in Saudi, which came a little out of the blue, really. And I would say when you ask: ‘Where do they come from?’
I don’t think there is a single element one
should identify and attack.

“When you deal with champions, when you deal with delivering at such a high level in professional sport, you need to look at opportunities very holistically. Things are also quite connected. The physical state is connected with the mental state, is connected with the wellbeing overall, with the integration in the team. All these factors are very strong on Lando’s side.

“But the game is so competitive that you need to be at the top consistently. That’s what makes the difference. It’s not really the top potential. Especially for Lando, it’s almost unexplored as to how good he is. Sometimes he surprises us with some of the performances he can put together.

Stella wants Norris to hit Verstappen levels of consistent excellence, as he achieved in taking Brazil sprint pole in 2023

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“Think of the pole for the sprint in Brazil after he had lost 0.2-0.3s in the first sector. How did he manage to put it on pole in the other five corners? That was just amazing.

“But consistency in this kind of delivery is what makes the difference, and I think Max is establishing new standards from what we’ve seen recently in terms of how consistently you can perform strongly. That’s the objective with our drivers, and it’s something we have at the top of our agenda into 2024.”

The Piastri factor

Anyone looking for an explanation for Norris’s few high-profile errors through 2023 is inevitably going to look across the garage at the driver in the other McLaren. After two seasons of comfortably outpacing Daniel Ricciardo, Norris found himself partnered last season with Piastri, an Australian rookie tipped for the very top.

McLaren fought a contract dispute with Alpine for his services – admittedly, Alpine’s ham-fisted handling of Piastri’s situation didn’t make that very hard – and Piastri didn’t disappoint, with
an impressive debut season.

It was Piastri, rather than Norris, who took McLaren’s first pole of 2023, for the sprint race in Qatar, and Piastri who delivered on it to take McLaren’s only win, also in the sprint in Qatar. Norris did subsequently take pole for the sprint in Brazil, but his errors prevented him repeating that in other places where he might have.

Was Piastri’s pace the cause of Norris’s mistakes? Did it put him under pressure, cause him to try too hard? That argument is not backed up by statistics. Norris outqualified Piastri 15-9 at an average of 0.184 seconds. And he retained a decisive edge despite Piastri’s improved performances in the second half as he found his feet.

The gap did come down, but still Norris outqualified Piastri 9-6 from Silverstone onwards, and the average gap reduced only slightly, to 0.146s, which includes the times when Norris messed up and qualified behind Piastri when he should have been ahead. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Stella sees their competitive situation in only a positive light.

“The relationship between Lando and Oscar is a point of strength of our team,” Stella says. “Being Lando’s team-mate is enjoyable, because we’ve seen this kind of relationship already
with Daniel, and Carlos, so I would like to recognise and acknowledge how much Lando creates the condition for creating a fruitful relationship that supports the team and the progression of both drivers.

Stella believes pressure from Piastri is a good thing for Norris

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“Oscar came with similar characteristics. So, with the natural process of knowing each other, we can see this has created a very functional collaboration between the two drivers.”

Stella says that far from creating jealousy or tension between the two men, success for one only acts as a spur for the other. Asked whether it would cause problems for McLaren if Piastri were the driver who took
its first win this season rather than Norris,
Stella says: “I look forward to Oscar getting
his first victory. It would be an incredible result considering what we’ve seen last year with
Red Bull when there really wasn’t much space
left for anybody else.

“If we had a victory by Oscar, it would be an incredible emotion, and it would be an incredible emotion for Lando as well because it means we have a car that can win races.

"When he wins his first race, it will be a beautiful moment. He is ready for that. It’s more about us delivering the car that allows him to take the opportunities" Andrea Stella

“If I project myself for a second in Lando’s head, I would recognise how fair a competitor he is. He is a very fair person and he would ask himself, ‘What do I need to do better to do the same as Oscar has been able to do?’”

Some great reward

The heat is taken out of any intra-team rivalry to a degree when the rewards are relatively small, so Verstappen’s domination of F1 last year meant Norris and Piastri could get to know each other with relatively reduced pressure. It remains to be seen whether that is still the case in 2024.

Whatever the car’s performance, there is always something at stake. Primarily, pride, the knowledge that you’re the faster driver in the team rather than your team-mate. And with that comes status – both inside the team and without.

Right now, Norris is undoubtedly the main man at McLaren, but Piastri has given notice of intent. And so impressive was his debut season that by the summer McLaren had exercised an option in his contract to keep him until the end of 2026. That committed him to the team a year longer than Norris, who at that point still had two years left on his contract – until McLaren moved to extend it.

For now, though, the focus at McLaren is on building upon the progress the team made so impressively through 2023 and trying to gain enough ground to challenge Red Bull.

Norris remains McLaren's main man as the team seeks to continue its progress from 2023

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Norris said towards the end of last year: “We’ve taken some massive steps forward. Considering we’re talking about fighting the
Red Bull, we’re talking about one of the best drivers in Formula 1 ever, in one of the most dominating cars. And for us to go from where we were in Bahrain to getting close and talking about fighting a Red Bull I think are very
good signs for us.

“We know we still have plenty more things
to come. So I’m excited and I believe we can do
 it as a team.”

Stella, meanwhile, says that long-awaited first victory for Norris is simply a matter of McLaren providing him the car to do it.

“At the moment, the main reason why it hasn’t been possible is we haven’t put Lando in condition to consistently compete for the victory,” Stella says. “So when he wins his first race, it will be a beautiful moment.

“He is ready for that. It’s more about us delivering the car that allows him to take the opportunities. At the moment, we’ve been leading races, even last year more than once,
but we couldn’t consolidate this result up to
the chequered flag.

“We were very impressed how he was leading the races. We gave everything we could. Brazil, just a few more tenths in the car and the victory would have come home. We look forward to it and hopefully will have the condition in 2024.”

After regularly claiming podium finishes in 2023, will this be the year Norris becomes a winner?

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

The pull of the Bull

Norris has been on Red Bull’s radar for several years, and Perez’s struggles made an approach by the world champion team a real possibility, even though until recently Norris was under contract to McLaren until the end of 2025. Little wonder McLaren CEO Zak Brown made the relatively unusual move of tying up an extension, believed to be two further years, now rather than waiting for Milton Keynes to try to whistle his driver out from under him.

Red Bull wants Perez to act as effective support for Verstappen and to see him improve his qualifying. If he can’t, Red Bull will look for an alternative. This will involve looking outside the fold, too. It’s clear the decision-makers don’t consider Yuki Tsunoda to be a Red Bull Racing driver. So, if Ricciardo wants his old seat back, he will have to convincingly beat the Japanese. Liam Lawson, after making his debut at Red Bull’s second-string team, is just too raw.

"I tend to focus on making sure McLaren is the best environment and people want to be with us because you can’t control external approaches. I’m very confident in the relationship we have with Lando" Zak Brown

For Norris, the decision was more than over which team he thinks is likely to give him the best car. He will have considered whether a team so focused on Verstappen would be right for him. Brown, therefore, focused on painting McLaren as Norris’s best option.

He says his approach to any employee is “for them to want to be at McLaren, so I tend to focus on making sure McLaren is the best environment and people want to be with us because you can’t control external approaches. I’m very confident in the relationship we have with Lando.”

On the contract extension, Brown said: “I’m delighted we’re continuing our relationship with Lando for multiple years to come. It’s been a fantastic journey over the past six years, and he has shown fantastic commitment and desire to push the team forward and get McLaren back to the front of the grid.”

McLaren moved quickly to tie Norris down to an extended deal that will keep him at the team for the foreseeable future

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images