Max Verstappen has a big points lead in the 2024 drivers championship after 14 races, and the question is whether McLaren's Lando Norris can possibly catch him from P2 in the standings over the remaining ten rounds.
Norris claimed his maiden Formula 1 Grand Prix in Miami but lost out on a second victory in Hungary when team orders directed him to hand the lead of the race to Oscar Piastri.
That cost Norris eight points, which could prove costly if the title battle goes down the wire. Norris also seemed distracted and off his game in the following race, when he finished one place behind Verstappen's Red Bull in Belgium.
This is the first time in his F1 career that Norris has been seriously included in any conversation about the title battle at the midpoint of the season, and the spotlight inevitably comes with huge pressure attached.
"I'm fighting for a world championship now. What questions do I need to ask for myself?" Norris acknowledged in an exclusive interview with RacingNews365 published this week.
"I don't know. Honestly I don't think I can answer it because I'm only here now, there's only so much I can answer for," he speculated.
"You can prepare for some of that, but [not for] the emotion and the adrenaline and everything you can't replicate. Just go, 'Yeah, I will be thinking of that. I need to think of this. I need to do that'.
"It's a situation that I don't know, and I've not been through before, I think it'd be very tough," he admitted when asked how it might feel to be locked in such an intense battle with Verstappen, with whom he is good friends off the track.
That friendship took a bit of a dent when the pair collided in the Austrian Grand Prix whilst battling over the race lead. Although there were hot tempers at the time, Norris says it won't change their friendship - or the way they race.
"I attempted several overtakes, didn't go to plan," he said of the Austrian incident. "We ended up crashing. None of this was because [I was] more lenient, or less lenient, simply because we played padel two weeks prior.
"None of that changed, people just like to talk about it and use it as a topic," he said. "I want to enjoy my time in the paddock and away from the paddock. If that is with Max or Carlos playing golf or whatever, so be it."
Relations between title rivals and even team mates haven't always been quite so harmonious in th epast, but that doesn't bother Norris. "Just because previous champions were the opposite, very happy for them. They did their thing, I'm doing mine.
"[Critics] think they know answers just because they tried to look at history [and conclude], 'Oh, that didn't go well for them'," he said. "As much as I respect historical data, I also don't care. I'm myself, and I'm different.
"As long as I'm happy for me and my life, that's what matters," he added. However, he did admit in Spa that he needed to take a step away from F1 over the summer shutdown and decompress from everything that had happened. “I think I just need to reset," he told the media.
Former F1 race winner turned pundit and race steward Johnny Herbert feels that Norris needs to not be so hard on himself in public when things don't go his way, such as in Hungary or after another poor start in Belgium.
“He is under pressure, but as a GP winner now he should be able to cope," said the Briton. “After Hungary, Lando probably felt it was not the right call. Then at Spa, he went into the gravel in a poor start.
"He’s had two races when it has gone against him while Oscar Piastri, his team mate, has won a race and been on the podium. Lando is very honest, but in my opinion it's something he should keep to himself and not share with the world.
“I would have tried to correct the errors but I wouldn’t tell the world what I was feeling because that is something that other drivers will try to use to their advantage.
“His rivalry with Oscar is one that can benefit both, they can feed off each other and push each other," he suggested.
Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko - never short of a withering assessment when he detects a weakness in a driver - gave a similar sense of the relative strengths of the two McLaren drivers at this stage of the season.
“It seems Piastri is mentally the stronger one," the Austrian told Sky Germany. "Oscar has gradually closed the gap to Lando and is even faster at times.”
Piastri is currently fourth in the drivers standings, but his deficit to championship leader Verstappen is already 110 points which is probably too far away to mount a realistic title bid in the time left.
Even from P2, Norris faces a huge challenge to close a 78-point gap in time unless Red Bull goes into full meltdown. As things stand, Verstappen could fail to finish three races with Norris needing maximum points just to draw level.
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