Norris fears F1's dangers, but will to 'go out and drive' greater

Lando Norris is fully aware of Formula 1's dangers, and the McLaren rookie even fears the perils potentially facing drivers, but his will to race is much greater.

The progress enjoyed by F1 in the past few decades in terms of safety has fortunately kept drivers out of harm's way, with the sport's only fatality in the past 25 years occurring as a result of the freak set of circumstances that surrounded the tragic accident of Jules Bianchi in Japan in 2014.

Motorsport remains a high risk endeavor however as the accidents and painful consequences suffered by Robert Wickens in Indycar or young Billy Monger in F4 reminded us all too well.

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"Some drivers say there’s no fear," Norris told Reuters.

"For me there is fear. I fear death. I fear injury. I fear big crashes. I do fear all that stuff.

"Maybe I’m more human than some of the other drivers. But it’s just a fear. It’s not like I don’t want to go out and drive."

Norris heads to Monte-Carlo this weekend, a venue where fear can crop up quite quickly around a treacherous track that takes no prisoners;

"I can manage it well but if you go to Monaco or something, fear can kick in a much bigger way," added the 19-year-old.

"There’s no room for error. If you crash, generally it’s quite a big crash.

"Those two things you never get in the simulator; G-force and fear. You don’t care if you crash or hit the barrier, there’s no consequence for it."

Norris will hopefully side-step the pitfalls of Monaco this weekend, especially in Saturday afternoon's all-important qualifying session.

"This track requires all your concentration and there’s never really a break anywhere around the lap," he said.

"There’s a lot of focus on getting it right on Saturday – it can really make or break your weekend as there aren’t many overtaking opportunities there come Sunday.

"My target is to put in a good performance in quali and place ourselves in a position to take advantage of any mid-race drama. The key to scoring points here is to ensure we have a clean race."

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