Norris "proud" with 2024 season: "Next year we can win the championship"
F1 News
Since the sublime 2021 season, Max Verstappen and Red Bull have dominated Formula 1. Many expected 2024 to be the same again, but Lando Norris and McLaren brought the fight in 2024. Although the Brit could not win the drivers' championship, his team sealed their first constructors' title since 1998 in what has been a superb turnaround.
At the beginning of the 2023 season at the Bahrain Grand Prix, McLaren were right at the back of the grid, with Norris himself finishing last of all the classified cars and two laps behind the winner Verstappen. However, at the British Grand Prix just a few months later, there was a huge chance in the team, bringing updates to Silverstone that reshaped the team and their pace and saw them fight right at the front of the grid.
The papaya-coloured team were able to continue with that form and bring that to the 2024 season, aiding Norris in his title challenge to Verstappen. Norris' first win of his career came at the Miami Grand Prix, showing both he and his team have the qualities to challenge for both titles in the season, which continued all the way to the Las Vegas Grand Prix. There were some battles on collisions at the Austrian, United States and Mexican Grands Prix, and a declining RB20 gave Norris some title hope. However, some key mistakes from the Brit, along with some stunning drives from Verstappen, meant the title was sealed in the 'Sin City'.
Norris "happy to finish second" behind Verstappen
When Norris was asked if he was proud of what McLaren had achieved, he said: "I’m very proud of the whole team for putting up the fight for so long, for starting to catch up, and catching up as much as we did. We were the fourth-best team at the beginning of the year. Red Bull have never been the fourth-best team, ever, so we had just too big of a deficit to catch up from the beginning of the season and we could not because they've been too strong still," the driver began to GPblog among others.
"Next year we'll go into the season with a car we think we can win the championship with from round one and we've not been able to do that for the last six years, so I'm excited for that, but I'm proud of what we've achieved," continued Norris.
Even though the McLaren that the Brit had at his disposal showed much more promise than the RB20 throughout the season, there was nothing that could be done with Verstappen and his magnificent talent, pulling out some unbelievable performances when it looked near impossible to do so. But Norris continued on by saying he was also very happy that only he was challenging Verstappen in the drivers' championship.
"No one else is there fighting him. It's been me and it's been McLaren, so I'm proud of what we've achieved. Could we have done some things better? Absolutely. Do I think we could have won the championship even with a perfect season? I don't. So I'm happy to finish second," concluded Norris.
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