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Lando Norris Was Wary of Chasing the ‘Bigger Picture’ to Prioritize Winning Smaller Battles in 2024

Nischay Rathore
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FIA AWARDS CEREMONY 2024 NORRIS Lando, McLaren Racing, FIA Formula 1, portrait during the 2024 FIA Awards Ceremony, on December 13, 2024 at BK Arena, in Kigali, Rwanda

By the time the 2024 season moved on to the Dutch GP, Lando Norris was 78 points behind leader Max Verstappen. While the gap was still significant, McLaren’s incumbent performance suggested the two championships were achievable. Norris, however, was wary of getting his hopes too high.

The reason behind keeping himself and the team humble was to prioritize smaller wins. Those wins, he suggests, were finding two to three-tenths of a second through each upgrade package. Norris led the team to focus on the tasks at hand. Ensuring podium finishes at each race weekend by simply achieving daily goals was the mantra for success.

“I think it starts to get away from you when you start to think of the bigger picture too much,” Norris said on the Back At Base podcast. “You think of what can we do this weekend, what can we do today, what can we do tomorrow to maximize that and to achieve those kind of goals,” he added.

Norris observed that the team had developed a better understanding of each race they traveled to. That gave them the confidence of believing that they could finish the weekend with both drivers on the podium. Even that feeling of confidence was interlinked with the one or two-tenths of a performance they were able to extract from the car prior to landing on the track.

The McLaren ace admitted these were small wins. However, these little triumphs culminated in the difference that would ultimately decide whether they would win the races.

Incidentally, Norris had a dominant Dutch GP as he ended Verstappen‘s immaculate win record on home soil. The Dutchman managed a P2 finish, albeit with a 23-second gap to the #4 driver.

The McLaren masterstroke that broke the deadlock for Norris

In his six years in F1, Norris only got on the top step of the podium for the first time at the 2024 Miami GP. The first race win was a long time coming and when it did, he finished it in a dominant fashion. That boost of performance came through an extensive upgrade package that took even the team’s chief designer Rob Marshall by surprise.

“You had floor, bodywork, suspension, wings. It was not a new car but it was a good shake-up of the existing car. Yes, that’s a huge upgrade involving pretty much every department,” explained Marshall on the extent of the upgrade.

“I think we put it on the car, it worked really well to start off with. Often you put an upgrade on and it takes you a race or two to get it, to understand it. We kind of got it dialed in pretty quickly and it was a good step,” he added.

Marshall admitted that the team worked for months on the upgrade package. Many of the parts he mentioned took months to produce. However, what made it all worth the wait for him was the instant impact they had on the car’s performance.

Post Edited By:Somin Bhattacharjee

About the author

Nischay Rathore

Nischay Rathore

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Nischay Rathore is an F1 journalist at The SportsRush with over a thousand articles under his belt. An avid Ayrton Senna admirer, Nischay embarked on his sports journalism journey despite completing graduation in Law. When not covering the high-speed thrills of the pinnacle of motorsport, he can be seen enjoying crime thrillers and 90s gangster movies with a hearty bowl of buttery popcorn.

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