Lando Norris says his hopes of chasing Max Verstappen and winning this year’s Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship are “a little bit incredible”. He accepted official honors as runner-up.
Verstappen maintained a comfortable lead after winning seven of the first 10 races this season, while Norris threatened to challenge after the Red Bull driver failed to win in 10 races. Norris reduced the deficit to 47 points (still almost two race wins) and heads into the weekend’s race at Interlagos, but although Verstappen won in wet conditions, the battle is over and Norris believes it is unrealistic to expect him to turn that around. Big margin.
“I wasn’t close enough to Max,” Norris said at the FIA Prize Giving in Rwanda. “If anyone thought I would get it, it was probably a bit of a stretch. But at the same time, we tried for as long as we could. “I also tried.”
Norris secured the constructors’ championship for McLaren by winning the final round in Abu Dhabi, and CEO Zak Brown said he and team-mate Oscar Piastri were at the heart of that achievement.
“Andrea [Stella, team principal] He has done an unbelievable job leading this racing team. As we have said from the beginning, we have two great racing drivers and all the men and women at McLaren have done a great job,” said Brown.
“I’m thinking of getting into the final against Ferrari. If there was one team that would go all the way to the last lap, Ferrari would be it. And they did an incredible job. “They kept us honest until the end.”
From Stella’s perspective, winning his first constructors’ championship as team principal was a new experience for him since joining Ferrari’s dominance in the mid-2000s.
“It depends on your perspective,” Stella said. “This championship is different because it marks McLaren’s first success in 26 years. So there was a long period of time without any celebrations.
“Personally, it’s a completely different role. It’s a completely different role. And it’s different because it’s unprecedented how quickly we’ve evolved since the first two races compared to last year. We had zero points and were last in the classification, and now we are world champions with 666 points.”
