Fights with Verstappen showed where I need to improve

Lando Norris acknowledged he will have to do better when he fights Max Verstappen on-track than he has done this year.

McLaren clinched the constructors’ championship yesterday but Norris lost the drivers’ title fight to the Red Bull driver two rounds earlier.

Norris had never won a grand prix before the season began. He said this year gave him the belief he can fight for the championship in the future.

“I don’t believe in a lot of things but the one thing I’ve learned this year is probably to believe in myself a bit more,” said Norris after winning yesterday’s season finale in Abu Dhabi.

Lando Norris, McLaren, Yas Marina, 2024 — Norris has “not come out on top as much as I want”

“I’ve certainly not come out on top as often as I would have liked in certain moments as a driver, especially in my fights against Max. As much as it hurts sometimes, I’m probably happy about it now that I’m going to go into next season knowing that I can fight.

“I know myself, and I know more and better than anyone what I need to improve on, where I’m not strong enough, where I’m strong enough. I’m always open for criticism, things like that. But I’m the one who knows better than the others – not in an arrogant way or a selfish way – but I know that I have to improve in a lot of areas and certain things.”

The McLaren driver out-qualified team mate Oscar Piastri for 20 out of 24 grands prix this year. He said his single-lap pace is an area where he has clearly improved.

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“When you look at my qualifying performances, for instance, they’ve been almost twice as good as I was last year, especially comparing to the other guys in exactly the same car,” he said. “So I’ve definitely stepped it up at a good level this season.”

“I remember 12 months ago here I messed up my quali three lap, a lap that I should have done P2 when I had a big slide in [turns] 12 and 13,” he explained. “I was pretty annoyed with myself post-quali and that was what everyone spoke about then.

“But that’s not really happened this year. I’ve closed off my quali laps. I’ve improved in all those areas.”

However, although Norris believes 2024 was “my best season [for] performance, personally” he admitted “probably it wasn’t” good enough. There were too many times when he missed opportunities to take points off the driver who won the championship.

“I obviously lost out on a few things,” said Norris. “There were maybe three starts this year which lost me one or two positions at times – but they were positions quite often just to Max, or it was Budapest and one to Oscar and little things like that.

“But none of them, when I look back on them, made me feel like I’ve not got what it takes, and those moments only came when it was directly against Max. And it’s Max: Going up against Max in any state is always going to be tricky. No one has a nice time racing Max.”

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The two championship rivals first clashed in Austria, where both cars sustained damaged but Verstappen out-scored Norris despite being penalised. Verstappen frustrated Norris’s attempts to pass him at the United States Grand Prix in Austin, where the McLaren driver received a penalty which cost him more points to the Red Bull driver.

Lando Norris, Max Verstappen, Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, 2024 — Mexico showed “not everything he does is perfect” – Norris

Norris came out on top when the two met on-track in Mexico. However Verstappen succeeded in delaying Norris and limiting his points-scoring by forcing him off-track, costing him a place to Charles Leclerc who went on to win. The McLaren driver said the last incident between the pair made a difference in how Verstappen’s driving is perceived.

“I think Mexico was a bit of a turning point when it was proved that not everything he does is perfect,” said Norris. “I think if we all go back to Austin and go back to turn 12, the majority of – I say, almost everyone on the grid – drivers and also externally, disagreed with the fact I got the penalty. We either both should not have got one or we both should have got one.”

He described battling Verstappen as having a “toe-to-toe fight with one of the best in the world,” but pointed out he approached those situations at a disadvantage having lost so many points to Verstappen earlier in the season.

“What you don’t see on the outside are some of those moments where if I did certain things, we would have crashed. People on the outside have no idea what it takes [in] those moments where you accept losing a battle.

“That is the case and that was because of where we were in the first six or seven races of the year. We lost too many points and I was just in that position where I couldn’t gain as much as what I needed to and wanted to.

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“But I’m not using any of these as excuses. I’m saying I didn’t have what it took this season to fight against Max and deliver what I needed to deliver. But it certainly gave me the feeling of, ‘okay, if I improve this little bit here, this little bit here’, for the first time, I have confidence in saying I’ve definitely got what it takes.”

Norris said he has already seen signs in the final races that he has improved his performance to another level. “I feel like I’ve already done that quite a lot in the last three, four, five races. I feel like I’ve delivered some very strong results.

“But on the whole, next year is hopefully a year where I can go in and decide before the first race we’re going to fight for a championship. We’ve not ever thought of that. We’ve not even had the feeling of it from a team perspective and also for me as a driver.

“So hopefully the next year is that year. We obviously have a lot of work to do. Ferrari are going to be pushing a lot. But that’s another year. For now, I’m just going to celebrate with my team tonight and celebrate what they deserve.”