Fighting talk from Norris as he says he has "nothing to lose"
F1 News
Lando Norris believes that there is no pressure on himself and McLaren as both title battles hot up. With the Singapore Grand Prix upcoming this weekend, Norris sits 59 points adrift of Max Verstappen in the drivers' standings, but after Oscar Piastri's win at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, McLaren have now taken the lead in the constructors' standings.
Red Bull started the 2024 season just as the 2023 season had gone: with utter dominance. Another record-breaking season looked likely. However, it has not been the case. Verstappen is now searching for his first win since the Spanish Grand Prix. Upgrades have been brought to the RB20 to try and improve their pace, but Helmut Marko admitted that the effects of the updates will only be seen in Austin.
But with just seven race weekends left, with three of them being sprint weekends, the window of opportunity for Norris to close that 59-point gap on Verstappen continues to close. But knowing the current performance of his papaya-coloured car is better than the RB20, the Brit was asked whether the championship was his to lose.
Norris believes there is 'nothing to lose'
Norris was posed with this question at the Marina Bay Circuit on Thursday, but he did not believe that he was the favourite for the title despite having the superior car: "No. If we go back to the beginning of the year, Red Bull was still dominant. And I mean, they won the first four or five races of the year. Max had the first eight poles of the year, and they were beating us by bigger margins than we're beating them by. They're having a less difficult time than we had at the beginning of the year."
The 24-year-old carried on by saying, "It's only been the last two where I would say that they've been off the pace, both a little bit in qualifying but also and probably more so the race itself. But if you go back to last weekend, Max just said he didn't get the setup right, that was his excuse for it. And Checo was maybe, if not one of the quickest and should have won the race, so that's not just Max having a bad weekend, not Red Bull having a bad weekend."
Finally, Norris said: "I think people just need to look more specifically at what things are obvious and in front of them and not make judgments of general stuff. But it's still for him to lose, not for me. I'm still the one that's got nothing to lose at the minute."
This article was created in collaboration with Cas van de Kleut