Lando Norris Given a Reality Check on Title Dreams by McLaren’s Own Racing Director

For the first time in his F1 career, Lando Norris has a car underneath him that’s allowing him to battle against Max Verstappen in the championship. However, McLaren’s racing director, Randeep Singh is not too keen on getting Norris’ hopes too high for the title.

Although Norris is technically still in the hunt, he is 70 points behind Verstappen in the standings. A gap as big as that has never been overcome in the history of the sport and Singh is well aware of the fact. What’s also not in favor of the Briton is that multiple teams are contending for race wins in 2024 including Mercedes and Ferrari who could easily take crucial points away from the #4 driver.

While Randeep does acknowledge that mathematically it’s still possible for Norris to win the championship, that’s not what McLaren is focused on at the moment. According to Singh, the team is concerned about optimizing their performance one race at a time.

In a recent episode of ‘The Fast and The Curious’ podcast, he remarked, “Like mathematically, it’s possible [for Lando to win the title] but really we just focus on getting the most out of every single race, learning as much as we can from all the opportunities and the small mistakes that we make and just seeing where we get to.”

Singh stated that thinking too far ahead about the championship permutations would distract them from the car development. Currently, McLaren is acing its in-season development with their packages in Miami and Zandvoort bolstering the MCL38’s pace.

It was evident at the Dutch GP as Norris dominated Verstappen in his home race. While the 70-point gap would be intimidating, McLaren’s recent uptick would have given a lot of satisfaction and hope to the 24-year-old driver for his championship bid.

Norris’ 22-second win over Verstappen did not surprise Singh

Over the last two seasons, it has become habitual for F1 fans to see Verstappen winning with big margins over other drivers. So, to see Norris pull a gap of 22.9 seconds over the Dutchman after having lost the lead to him at the start was shocking for many.

However, Randeep revealed that he wasn’t shocked by the Norris’ results in Zandvoort. He explained that the internal approach at the Woking outfit is quite steady and focused on bringing upgrades throughout the year. They are not focusing too much on how the result looks but rather on improving their capabilities overall.

Singh added, “I think it was a little bit of a surprise of how quick we were relative to everyone else but we expected to be decently quick in Zandvoort.”

While McLaren is not expecting Norris to win the title in 2024, team principal Andrea Stella has urged the Briton to keep a mentality like Sebastian Vettel, who won nine consecutive races through to the end of the 2013 season having won the title in India.