Lando Norris: Max Verstappen would not have won title in a McLaren – history proves it

Exclusive interview: With his championship chances now all but gone, Briton is focused on winning constructors’ crown for Woking-based team

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Asked to sum up his season in three words, Lando Norris thinks for a long time before settling on an answer. “Pretty damn good,” he says eventually. Then he has another think and downgrades the ‘good’ to ‘decent’. “I’m trying to come up with a word that’s good but not quite good enough,” he explains. “Like, not perfect, but OK.”
It has clearly been tough for Norris since his title challenge disintegrated in spectacular fashion in a soggy Brazil earlier this month. A “pretty s—– week” at home in Monaco, one in which he found it “impossible to sleep for the first two days” as he tried to process what had just happened, was followed by a more restful one in which he managed to “build himself back up” with the help of friends and colleagues.
The 25-year-old insists he is heading into this weekend’s race in Las Vegas in a positive frame of mind. He says he has now come to terms with the fact that the drivers’ championship is gone (albeit technically, with a deficit of 62 points to Max Verstappen and 60 points still available after Saturday’s race, it is still just about possible). Instead he is “all-in” for the constructors’ championship, which McLaren lead by 36pts from Ferrari and which they can win this season for the first time since 1998.
Norris presents a fascinating character study at this stage of his career. Introspective, vulnerable – some would say too vulnerable – undoubtedly quick, it is difficult to know how to judge him.
He clearly senses this. Sitting in McLaren’s paddock home in Sin City, at close to midnight local time, just as the casinos on the nearby Strip are really starting to gear up for action, Norris is is acutely aware of the narrative which has developed in some quarters, which says he threw away his chance to win this championship with a litany of errors, and he wants to nip it in the bud.
Norris is adamant that no one, not even Verstappen, the driver he rates as “the benchmark” for his generation and “one of the best of all time”, would have managed to do what he could not. “No, definitely not,” he replies quickly when asked whether he thinks Verstappen would have won this title had he been driving the McLaren.
Some may think Norris is being a bit too generous to himself. While the Briton was not wholly to blame for all of his dropped points this season, with McLaren also culpable for various strategic errors, there is no doubt he frittered away a fair few. Norris cost himself potential wins in Spain and Hungary thanks to poor starts, was outmanoeuvred by team-mate Oscar Piastri in Italy, and lost out to Verstappen again at the start in Austin. And that’s before you get to Brazil where Norris made two poor starts, the second after a red flag period, as well as a potential mistake in pitting just before a red flag.
Norris accepts these errors, but he also insists the margins were always much tighter than people imagine and the odds were always stacked against him.
“I mean, no one ever in the history of Formula One has come back from the size of deficit I had,” he notes of a gap which stood at 84 points after Silverstone in July. “No one. Ever. And there have been much bigger swings of performance of cars in the past than there has been now. The advantage they [Red Bull] had in the beginning of the season over everyone was way more than we’ve had.”
He has a point. McLaren have generally had the quickest car from Miami onwards, but not everywhere. It would have needed everything to go perfectly from then onwards for Norris to overhaul Verstappen – and possibly a DNF or two on the Dutch driver’s part. They never came. “I think if it was any other driver, well not any other driver, but if it wasn’t Max and Red Bull, I think the chances [of winning the title] would have been much higher,” he says.
Not that Verstappen’s brilliance made it any easier to process when – having reduced the deficit to 44 points by Brazil – things did eventually go awry. Norris says he did not even look on social media after the race in Sao Paulo, as he knew what the reaction would be like. “I deleted all of my social media so I didn’t have any of that,” he says.
Nevertheless, the days after Brazil were difficult. All that adrenalin and excitement suddenly giving way to introspection and ennui. “I literally couldn’t sleep for the first two days,” he recalls. “So I did like, what, 36-40 hours straight. So that probably made everything worse. When you’re tired, you’re more moody, and that kind of thing. Like, it’s a double effect.
“I was just sat at home alone. It probably would have been better if I had been with my friends. But they don’t live in Monaco. They also have lives and are busy doing other things. And I’m a big overthinker, so like the whole flight home, the whole week, it just played over and over in my head.
“What could I have done differently? Why did I do that? Why did I not do this? You start thinking of all the scenarios that you kind of blame yourself for, why it’s now not possible, that kind of thing. And yeah, because I overthink and I struggle with that kind of thing, that took a bigger toll in the days after. It wasn’t an easy time.”
Eventually, with the help of friends and family – he namechecks his team principal, Andrea Stella, here – he came around to a different way of thinking. That the season as a whole was a learning experience, which should leave him in better shape.
As Norris said at his press conference on Thursday, he probably “wasn’t ready” to take on a fully fit and firing Verstappen this season. After all, until Miami there was no inkling whatsoever that a battle might be on the cards. He should be better for this experience.
The fascinating thing is whether he will be. Another way of looking at it is that he may never get a better chance. With the field converging, and his team-mate Piastri gaining experience all the time?
“True,” he says. “But this year was a better performing year for me than last year. My progression this year is more than it probably has been over the last few years.
“I think from the summer break onwards, I still made mistakes here and there, don’t get me wrong. But everyone makes mistakes now and then, even world champions. But I think I performed at the level that I need to.” The level needed to win the title next season if McLaren equip him with a similarly competitive car? “I think so, yes.” It is going to be fascinating finding out.
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