Even the best driver on the grid needs a team mate to push them

Lando Norris said McLaren’s strong driver pairing is a vital advantage for them, after they won the two opening rounds of the new season.

He made the remarks after McLaren scored more than double the points of Red Bull over the Australian and Chinese grands prix. All of Red Bull’s 36 points were scored by Max Verstappen, who is Norris’s closest rival at the top of the drivers’ championship.

The poor performance of Verstappen’s new team mate Liam Lawson has raised speculation Red Bull may cut him loose just two races after he was hired to replace the under-performing Sergio Perez. Norris says McLaren’s more competitive pairing gives them an edge over the competition.

“Apart from Ferrari, I don’t think there’s another team that has two drivers that push each other anywhere near as much,” he said in the FIA press conference after Sunday’s race. “And for us, that’s a huge advantage.

“Even if you have the same car for everyone, if you have a team with two drivers who can push each other, they’re always going to beat everyone else that’s just on their own.

“We have a great car, we have a great team, but we also have two drivers that are pushing each other more than any other team has. And that will always triumph — even [over] the best driver on the grid.”

Norris said the co-operation between him and team mate Oscar Piastri is “one of our biggest strengths at the minute.”

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“We have different ways we drive. He wants some things on the car, I want different things. But normally our ways align and we always want the same thing in the end.”

Last weekend in Shanghai the teams had to adapt quickly to the changes in grip levels caused by the recently resurfaced track. “Oscar’s ability to adapt to a track like this was impressive, and something I clearly struggled a lot more to do,” Norris conceded.

“I hate understeer. The one thing I almost hate as much as brakes not working is probably understeer, and that’s what we had this weekend. As soon as we put the hard [tyres] on, for instance, my pace was a lot stronger because I had some front, finally.

“But I’ve learned a lot this weekend from Oscar and his ability to adapt to these different situations. It’s definitely something we’ll maximise because it’s helping us beat every other team at the minute.”

The pair pushed each other hard in both races. At Melbourne, when Norris was leading, the team temporarily instructed Piastri not to attack him when they caught a cluster of backmarkers on the damp, drying track. Norris said the team is ready to handle competitive situations between the drivers when necessary.

“We were free to race today, I didn’t have the pace to really get up to Oscar, and he drove very well. So he deserved it.

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“Same really last weekend, there were those two laps that I know everyone loves to talk about where we just held position, but the rest of it, we were free to race. So I’m sure we’re going to have some closer racing at some point. I think we’re both excited – probably nervous and excited at the same time – as I’m sure the team will be. But we’re ready.”

He believes the competition between McLaren’s drivers will serve them well if they find themselves under more pressure from rival teams in later races.

“We know that as much as we work together and we have a good time and enjoy ourselves, we both know we want to try and beat each other and show who’s best,” he explained. “And that’s inevitable. So there’s no point trying to hide away from that fact or make something of it.

“We’re two competitors who both want to win. But we help each other out. I think we both achieved something better this weekend because of that fact. And we’ll continue to do that.

“So I’m sure at the minute it’s going to be like that, but like Oscar said, at any point other teams can find something. Other teams have talked about upgrades and stuff already and they can catch up quicker than you think, just like we did last year. So as much as we’re doing that, we also have to think as a team and keep pushing the team forward from that side.”