Lando Norris is confident in his and McLaren’s abilities to challenge Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen for the title in the coming seasons despite his struggles this year. The Briton and McLaren have had a disastrous start to the 2023 season as they have been way off the pace compared to the top four teams: Red Bull, Mercedes, Aston Martin and Ferrari.
Despite these struggles, Norris in a recent interview with The Race (as quoted by soymotor.com) said,
“McLaren is the place where I feel I can perform at my best. I am confident that if I was now in a position to measure myself against Max and Lewis, I would be able to fight against them and be a title contender. I believe it even more for 2024 and more and more for 2025″.
The 23-year-old then gave the example of Verstappen to explain how he hopes to emulate the Dutchman’s recent run of success. Norris praised Verstappen for the way he has improved, stating that the 25-year-old is way more ‘complete and professional‘ now as compared to a few years ago.
The Briton explained his point further by stating that it was just a few seasons ago when Verstappen had several crashes and how all that has reduced significantly now. Even though Norris is confident in his abilities to fight for the title, beating Verstappen is going to be far from easy as the Dutchman is in the form of his life.
Lando Norris admits his performances in 2023 have been below expectations
In the same interview with The Race, Lando Norris admitted that his and McLaren’s performances in the 2023 season have been far below expectations. He stated that there have been several changes in the team recently for the same reason, as the newer members will help the side return back on track.
The Briton’s start to the 2023 season has been a sheer disappointment as he has just had two points-scoring finishes from the first five races. After kickstarting the new campaign with two 17th-place finishes, he scored his first points in Australia by finishing sixth before scoring points once again in Baku by finishing ninth.
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Meanwhile, his last race in Miami once again ended in huge disappointment as he finished 17th. Consequently of these results, he is currently ninth in the championship with just 10 points. While he is six points clear of his rookie teammate Oscar Piastri, Norris is already 17 points behind eighth-placed Lance Stroll.
Norris had two outstanding seasons in 2021 and 2022
Even though Lando Norris has struggled this year, he has done more than enough to show his potential when he has a strong enough car to compete. The McLaren driver had two brilliant seasons in 2021 and 2022 as he outscored more experienced teammate Daniel Ricciardo by a significant margin in both campaigns.
In 2021, Norris finished sixth in the championship with 160 points, 45 points clear of Ricciardo. While the 23-year-old could not replicate the same level of performance in 2022, he did manage to beat his Australian teammate by a far greater margin. Norris finished seventh in the championship in 2022 with 122 points and outscored Ricciardo by a whopping 85 points.
