Lando Norris has been a one-team man, being with McLaren since the start of his F1 career in 2019. However, the Woking team had not repaid his faith in the best way as they have struggled to produce a winning car. While Norris finished P1 for the first time in Miami last week, that wasn’t the reality for him two to three years ago.
The Briton once revealed on the High-Performance podcast that getting P3 was equivalent to a race win for him. He stated, “When you get to Formula 1, a race win doesn’t necessarily mean you are first place in the race right. Like a race win for me, two years ago, like in Austria was being third place”.
Norris reasoned how the pecking order of competitiveness in F1 has rarely been equal for multiple teams. Thus, when Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton were certainties to take the top two places in the races, the McLaren driver could at best achieve P3.
He mentioned on the podcast how even if McLaren reached their maximum potential, their ceiling was getting a third-place finish till 2021. It was the latter half of 2023 when Norris finally started to finish in second place.
The Woking team discovered a huge amount of performance since the Austrian GP last year. Their upgrades gave Norris a huge boost to consistently be at the sharp end along with Max Verstappen. Now, another upgrade package in Miami has enabled the Briton to win his maiden race in F1.
McLaren and Lando Norris making a bid to fight Red Bull
Ever since the mid-season upgrades in 2023, McLaren have regularly been the second-best team behind Red Bull. While Ferrari is also in a similar position as them, the Woking outfit’s trajectory promises much more.
The 2024 Miami GP victory will further bolster Lando Norris and McLaren’s confidence in their bid to take the fight to Red Bull. They have certainly bridged some of the deficit to the champion team.
Norris, buoyant after his maiden win, has also stated his intent to add more wins to his tally now. The upgrades to the MCL38 are a major step forward and the #4 driver would expect his team would extract more performance from them.
Thus, the Papaya team is going to look and challenge Red Bull rather than fall back from here. Norris mentioned, as per GP Blog, “I would like to say it’s the start. And now we’re already hungry for more.”
