“We Can’t Have That in F1”: Lando Norris Urged to Shed ‘Politeness’ to Crack the Whip at McLaren

Lando Norris became a race-winner for the first time in 2024 at the Miami GP. But, he came very close to winning more races which turned out to be squandered opportunities due to errors made by himself or his team McLaren. Keeping that in mind, ex-F1 race strategist Bernie Collins has strong words of advice for the Briton.

One of Norris’ recent mistakes came at the British GP, where he let McLaren choose the tires ahead of his pit stop. Collins wants Norris to put a stop to this, and be more assertive with his radio calls.

On the recent episode of the Sky Sports F1 podcast, Collins spoke about whether McLaren’s lack of race-winning experience is costing them this year. “I think Mercedes and Red Bull still have the edge in terms of making good decisions consistently as a team,” she said.

“With McLaren and Lando, [the relationship] is a bit more polite,” she added. “….We can’t have that in F1.”

 

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Collins, who used to work for Aston Martin, believes that either Norris or McLaren has to be more confident in their decision-making. Whether it turns out to be wrong or not is secondary. Per Collins, at least their actions will be timely.

Norris for his ‘loser’s mentality’ at Silverstone

McLaren arguably had the fastest car in Silverstone and was responsible for their failure to win. F1 expert Nate Saunders summed up their mistakes, highlighting Norris’ “loser’s mentality”.

Saunders noted that Norris’ engineer had asked him if he wanted to cover Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen. However, according to him, Norris gave a strange reply. “And Lando’s radio was like, ‘Let’s cover Lewis’. Yeah let’s cover Lewis and then he pauses and says, ‘Or let’s cover Max. I am happy with either way.” 

The ESPN expert believes that this radio exchange between Norris and his engineer makes it clear that the 24-year-old and his team do not have the race-winning experience that the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull have to make critical calls.

Both Sanders and Collins suggest that with better decision-making, nothing can stop Norris from winning more races and putting up an actual fight for the World Championship.