McLaren tell Norris to change nothing about how he fights Verstappen · RaceFans

Lando Norris should change nothing about his approach to racing Max Verstappen, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes.

The McLaren driver has never previously been in contention for a Formula 1 title. However Stella said he is impressing McLaren every weekend with the progress he is making.

“Lando is coping with this situation of being in the fight for the championship in a way that we are enjoying,” he said. “He is now a very mature driver. Fast, his racecraft keeps improving all the time. The attitude, the learning from every situation, which we can appreciate on an almost race-by-race time scale.

“I think Lando is definitely now a mature driver to succeed in this kind of fight, which is a fight against one of the best drivers I think in the history of Formula 1 – looking at the titles that Max has achieved and I think this is universally recognised.

“So we keep telling Lando all the time, keep doing what you are doing, let’s keep improving all the time. Let’s become the best version of ourselves. Race after race.”

The two championship contenders have clashed three times in the last two races. Norris received a five-second time penalty in Austin, which cost him points to his championship rival, but Verstappen collected a pair of penalties in Mexico.

Norris believes Verstappen is trying to impair his races to reduce the number of points he can score. But Stella believes Norris is handling his rival correctly in their fights for position.

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“When I say ‘keep doing what we are doing’, I obviously mean this in a broad sense, but definitely I also mean this in a very specific sense.

“I think we got some learning, for instance, from Austria. We got a little too close and the points we are missing from Austria – having had a proper collision and then being knocked out of the race – are points that we regret.

“We don’t really regret many other points in this season. Potentially the one in Austin where we still believe that the final classification isn’t correct. But we respect the work of the stewards. We have tried with the Right of Review to find some correction of that situation that happened in Austin. This didn’t happen, we move on.

“So I think from Lando’s point of view, that’s the way it should be going racing. Lando reflects also in the way he goes racing our own values. We race fair. We race in a correct way. We race in a sportsmanlike way.

“Then ultimately, in this kind of close fight, there is a third party. That is the stewarding. We trust the stewarding. I think in Mexico, this worked very well and we had good racing.”