Sports are competitive, and F1 is even more so. Drivers battle it out one-on-one, whether they’re on the same team or not, which makes it challenging to maintain friendships. Still, some, like Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, have managed to keep theirs. However, it turns out their friendship isn’t as tight as most of the F1 community believes it to be.
Verstappen and Norris aren’t ‘real friends’. This is a bombshell that Norris dropped ahead of this weekend’s Las Vegas GP.
“Everybody thinks we are better mates than we are. I have other people who are my real friends. My true friends,” Norris said in an interview with redbull.com. That is not to say that Norris does not get along well with Verstappen as the Briton stated “That doesn’t change“.
Throughout the 2024 season, several experts have speculated whether the championship battle between Norris and Verstappen could strain their friendship. They feared that Verstappen’s tendency to push the limits—and at times cross them—might lead Norris to question his relationship with the Dutchman.
Lando Norris wasn’t ready for his championship battle against Max Verstappen pic.twitter.com/VBzsPvrldt
— ESPN F1 (@ESPNF1) November 21, 2024
That concern turned into reality when Norris said he would lose respect for Verstappen if he didn’t accept responsibility for their race-ending collision in Austria in June. Although the Red Bull driver didn’t apologize, it was the McLaren driver who later admitted that Verstappen wasn’t entirely at fault for the incident.
Since then, the two championship rivals have had several more tense moments on track, with Verstappen’s driving style coming under scrutiny during both the United States and Mexico City GP weekends. While Verstappen managed to avoid penalties in Austin despite his controversial defensive maneuvers, he couldn’t escape punishment in Mexico. The FIA handed him two penalties — one for running Norris wide and a second for gaining an advantage by going off the track himself.
Even though such have been the tactics that Verstappen has used to get the better of Norris, the Briton insisted he still gets along well with the three-time champion.
In Norris’s opinion, he is “good at keeping things separate“. For him, “If someone treats me like s*** on track, it doesn’t mean I will treat them like s*** off the track. They are two different worlds“.
However, they aren’t the ‘besties’ that many have speculated, and in reality, they just seem to be friends within the F1 circuit.
