McLaren star seals back-to-back wins as he looks to close the gap to the championship leader.
Amid a championship battle dominated by Mercedes and Ferrari, Lando Norris has been quietly rebuilding his title challenge.
Despite being the reigning world champion, the McLaren driver has found himself outside the spotlight as Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli leads the standings, with teammate George Russell and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton among his closest challengers. Norris, however, has responded with back-to-back victories in Hungary and Zandvoort.
Norris now has 159 points and sits fourth, 83 points behind Antonelli, who leads with 242. The gap remains substantial, but Norris’ recent run has revived his hopes of mounting a late-season title challenge.
The good news for Norris is that the championship fight appears set to go down to the wire, with the season finale at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit confirmed as the final showdown. Despite his resurgence, however, the 26-year-old believes McLaren still lacks the car needed to mount a serious title challenge. He suggested that, if the team can address its biggest weakness in slow-speed corners, he could be capable of winning every remaining race.
“I know I’ve just won two races in a row and had two poles in a row, but at the minute I don’t have the car I need to fight for a championship,” Norris said after the Dutch Grand Prix. He added that solving McLaren’s struggles through slow corners could give him the performance needed to close the gap to championship leader Kimi Antonelli.
“We’re very, very strong in high-speed corners, and that’s where we’ve made the biggest gains with the car. No one matches us in high-speed sections, and that’s a positive,” Norris said.
However, he acknowledged that Mercedes still holds a significant advantage over McLaren in slow-speed corners, describing the gap as “crazy”.
Norris urged McLaren not to become “complacent”, stressing that the team must focus on improving the car’s performance through slow-speed corners to unlock its full potential.
“If we can improve in the slow-speed corners, I’m confident I can win every race this season. If we don’t, it’s much harder to believe that,” Norris said.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes Norris is now more confident on track and has become better at choosing the right moment to attack. That was evident in his Dutch Grand Prix battle with Kimi Antonelli, when Norris seized the opportunity to pass the Mercedes driver after Antonelli’s own attempt to overtake Lewis Hamilton.
Stella said Norris’ confidence is not necessarily reflected in aggressive driving, but in his ability to remain patient and wait for the right opportunity.
“The self-confidence sometimes is not demonstrated by being the most aggressive,” Stella said, noting that Norris had not led at the end of the opening lap in either of his two recent victories. Rather than losing confidence, Stella said, Norris was “preparing his opportunity” before capitalising when the chance arose.
Norris said he is continuing to improve on track but credited his Dutch Grand Prix victory to the work McLaren put in to fine-tune the car’s setup. After struggling to match Mercedes’ pace in Saturday’s sprint, the team made significant adjustments overnight that transformed the car’s performance for Sunday’s race.
Norris described the turnaround as a clear example of how work behind the scenes can make the difference on race day, highlighting the importance of collaboration between the driver and his engineering team.
