MPH: Will Norris fight like Verstappen for F1 crown?

Interesting listening to Lando Norris answering a question at the McLaren launch yesterday about racing Max Verstappen. The Red Bull driver was of course his on-track nemesis of last year, the rival he came off second-best against in several wheel-to-wheel incidents and who he will surely be encountering again in ’25.

Norris accepts that on several of those occasions he just didn’t do a good enough job in racing a driver who will always be super-aggressive in either defence or attack. But, as Norris points out, the points margin Verstappen had opened at the beginning of the season, before the McLaren got its Miami upgrade and could run with the Red Bull, meant Verstappen was always at an advantage in their close encounters and with the reset of a new season — and in the assumption that McLaren will be quick from the outset this time — that should no longer apply.

“Being in his position [with a big points lead] with me being the chaser and the guy trying to attack, he had an advantage with how he drives and risks he takes. With the aggressiveness he has, there was almost no way I could come back from the deficit I had. There would have been too many scenarios that replicated Mexico or the Red Bull Ring, where if we make contact we are both out [and his points advantage is frozen].”

But Norris doesn’t let himself off the hook with that. “I learned a lot from those moments. There are definitely things I need to do better. I’ll always be first to admit it, I don’t need people telling me these things… I wasn’t at the level I needed to be at when I first went into those battles to take on a driver of Max’s aggression and level, one of the best there has ever been. I accept that, I take it on the chin. It hurts. It’s always going to hurt when you look silly at times and you don’t come out on top. But that’s the way it is in life sometimes. As long as I learn from them and don’t make them multiple times. Already by the end of last year I’d improved in those situations.”

The easiest way of beating Max is to out-qualify and run in front of him throughout — as Norris did several times last year. But if on one of those days when Norris does not have a car any quicker than Verstappen’s and they are inevitably pitched into fighting for track space and Max employs his ‘yield or we crash’ approach, Norris surely must be prepared to have the crash?

There was a long pause before he answered that. Because it’s a question that needs very careful handling. “I need to get my elbows out and I need to show him I’m not going to willingly give him any positions and those kind of things, yes. But I also have to be a smart driver, you have to be a smart driver to go up against Max. I don’t need to set out to prove something, I don’t need to go down fighting just to prove a point.