The Verstappen standard McLaren wants Norris to reach in F1 2024
'Could do better' is more or less how Lando Norris summed up his own 2023 Formula 1 season. But, at the same time, he continues to amaze a McLaren boss who has worked with champions including Michael Schumacher. The question, then, isn’t whether he can do better, but how – especially when Max Verstappen continues to set new standards…
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.
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