As the pressure continues to increase on Lando Norris to deliver his best performances week in and week out, it seems to be getting to him. After failing to capitalize in many of the previous races in the 2024 season, the Briton once again failed to capitalize on McLaren’s strong package at the US GP.
In the sprint qualifying, he managed to qualify only fourth, while his championship rival Max Verstappen took the sprint pole. Since Norris was unhappy with his performance and blamed himself, 2009 F1 champion Jenson Button has urged him to move on, stating that he can easily make up for it in the rest of the weekend.
️ “In a way, happy with P4, because I feel like it could have been a lot worse”
Not the happiest Lando Norris has been with a qualifying session recently: pic.twitter.com/QVMnAk0Iku
— The Race (@wearetherace) October 18, 2024
While speaking on Sky Sports F1, Button said, “It’s a tough one because Lando’s very emotional. When he makes a mistake, he’ll always point the finger at himself, which is good in a way.”
“But I just hope that he gets over a qualifying that he doesn’t think is very good. Do the debrief, get over it, and move on. It was one moment in time”, he added.
Button then added that he believes it is still all to play for Norris, as the 24-year-old still has a good chance to fight Verstappen for the win if he gets a good start in the sprint race at COTA.
Norris will hope that he can overtake the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc and the Mercedes of George Russell quickly to fight his championship rival for the win or at least not lose more than a point to the Dutchman in the sprint race. Similarly to Button, Anthony Davidson also believes that the #4 driver still has a fantastic chance to score some good points this weekend.
Davidson believes McLaren still has more potential
With both McLarens failing to fight Verstappen for pole in the sprint qualifying (Piastri only managed to qualify P16 due to a lap time deletion in SQ1), some believed that the Woking-based team’s results were shocking. However, Davidson doesn’t see it that way.
Instead, he believes “there was certainly more time in that McLaren”, which the team have failed to unlock during the sprint qualifying session. However, he believes that come the races [both the sprint and the Grand Prix], McLaren will be able to maximize their potential, and that will help Norris to produce a better performance.
Although there are not many points on offer for the sprint race win (eight points), since Verstappen currently has a 52-point lead in the championship, each point Norris loses to the Dutchman could prove to be extremely costly.
If Norris fails to beat Verstappen during the sprint race, the potential loss of confidence he may suffer could prove to be counterproductive — especially because of how self-critical he often is.
