Norris: 'We are close to Red Bull, I hope to fight with them more often

Norris was the celebrated man after the previous race in Miami. That victory has given him a lot of confidence, he said in the press conference at the media day in Imola. "That win has given us 100% more confidence. I believe we can challenge Red Bull more often. We had an update in Miami, but even without it we were quite a bit faster. Even before Verstappen was damaged, we were faster than him by a fairly big chunk."

"Sometimes people say I am too confident, but we are close. If we can solve some of our problems, we will compete even more often. Sometimes we are one or two tenths off, that's just a little bit of time gain in some corners. The differences are small," said the Briton about the prospects for the rest of the 2024 season.

Consistency key factor for Norris

Despite this, Norris stresses that there is still a lot of stretch, especially in terms of consistency. "It's a trade off to put in good performances weekend in, weekend out. But I'm looking forward to battling with the Red Bulls and Ferraris more often, I haven't done that very much yet. At the moment I think we are still the third team on the grid, but we can change that if we keep developing. In any case, I am happy with the progress we are making," Norris concluded.

This article was written in collaboration with Ben Stevens