Lando Norris brushes off critique and vows to stay true to himself, undeterred by his gentle persona impacting his race wins.
A challenging question was posed to one of the form men of the season.
Should Lando Norris toughen his driving—akin to Max Verstappen—if he wants to win more Grand Prix?
Following a clash between the McLaren F1 driver and the Red Bull driver in Austria, tensions rose, and some speculate this incident won’t be the last…
But if he aims to be a world champion one day, shouldn’t Lando Norris toughen his game, on and off the track? Become a killer, even if it means being too aggressive? Does a world champion driver need to be a ‘bad boy’ to earn respect?
The McLaren F1 driver was asked about this, and his response was quite blunt!
“I don’t care what people say in the media.”
“I’m a nice guy – I try to be, and I try to be respectful in every possible way. And who I am has absolutely nothing to do with what happens on the track…”
“I could be much more of a jerk, a bastard [dick in the original, ed.] and act like an idiot, have that persona and make people think I’m like that… but I don’t need it, I don’t want it.”
“I always want to joke, have fun, and laugh… I enjoy life, it’s as simple as that. When I put on the helmet, I don’t hear what people say…”
“No, I’m happy with my current balance.”
“I respect, I take into account what people say, but I know how to do what I think, and what I do, better than 99% of other people. It’s not that I don’t care, I care about what people say – I always try to take into account and improve my way of working, thinking, talking.”
“But I can say what I want and I can think what I need to think. I can do it for myself better than anyone else.”
Thus, Lando Norris wants to abstract himself from media noise, criticism, and focus on what he does best…
“In a way, I don’t care about people who speak negatively of me from that perspective. Things work differently for everyone.”
“People have different ways of winning, different ways of attacking or defending, whatever, different ways of living their lives.”
“So, I do what I want. I know how and what works for me, and I’ll stick to it.”
No questioning the strategy at McLaren F1?
If something needs changing at McLaren F1, it’s not the driver, but perhaps the strategy team.
Indeed, in the UK, the team arguably let a victory slip away. Oscar Piastri did an extra lap in the rain, losing 17 seconds. And towards the end of the Grand Prix, Lando Norris was put on used softs despite having new mediums in reserve…
Shouldn’t there be a significant reassessment at McLaren F1, especially regarding strategy, according to Lando Norris? Many have criticized the race management by the pit wall: were these criticisms unjust?
“No, not at all, it depends on how you take it.”
“I don’t think it’s unfair because there will always be mistakes, that’s life. People will criticize you, people will support you, people will make mistakes. We are not the only team in this situation. There have been times when Red Bull should have won and didn’t, and Mercedes should have won and didn’t.”
“At the same time, we haven’t blamed anyone but ourselves. It hurts when you lose your home race, when you had a chance to win it. But what matters is how you and we, as a team, handled the situation, how we learned from it, how we reviewed things, and how we’ve come back stronger this weekend and for the races to come.”
“There’s still a lot to learn, but I have confidence in our team. I think we always welcome criticism. Especially when it’s constructive, that’s what we prefer, but there will always be people who will support you or not. The most important thing is how we use these criticisms and how we turn them into something positive.”
“We have processes in the team to assess the situation, to make sure we are asking the right questions and that we stick to what we know. Because it’s easy to start inventing things and coming up with the best ideas and saying ‘why didn’t we do an extra lap with this and an extra lap with that’? Whereas sometimes it’s better to stick to the plan and do what we know is best.”
Lando Norris concludes by putting McLaren F1’s mistakes into perspective: it’s all about the details, milliseconds… There’s no need to overhaul everything because of such errors.
“It’s really not much.”
“After last weekend… it’s not something we had to spend five or six days on, or two weeks, trying to figure out a solution. Everyone has made an effort to work on themselves and figure out what they could have done better, and me to figure out what I could have said and done better.”
“I don’t think it’s a super complicated process, but when you are leading a race, or you are second and you have to make these decisions, of course, there’s always a lot more stress and pressure to make the right choice.”
“But we’ve done so many good things at the same time, it’s important to remind ourselves of what we did well. Of course, the times when we messed up a bit more are the times everyone remembers, unfortunately, and those do more harm to the team.”
“So let’s do simple things, things that I think we know and understand. We need to set everything up so it becomes a routine and a subconscious thing that we can just execute in a race, that’s probably the hardest part. I am confident that we can improve.”
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