Lando Norris has a car that is ripe for the World Cup title. But the McLaren pilot sometimes shows nerves, has self-doubt. He even speaks about this in the macho circle Formula 1 – and gets backing.
The race weekend in Dschidda has told a lot about the current situation in the tough premier class of motorsport. It has produced a new title favorite that gave statements both in terms of driving and verbally in Saudi Arabia.
Clear statements from Piatri
Oscar Piatri had lost qualifying against a Max Verstappen, which is currently out of the somewhat weaker Red Bull, which corrected in curve one immediately after the start with a rigorous but completely regular maneuver. Perhaps even more than his cool inner track coup, however, sticks to how Piatri then said about this scene: “When I was inside the curve, I knew that I wouldn’t go out as second”he said and certainly has in mind that in the direct duel with the four times-in-episode world champion, except for Lewis Hamilton, all other colleagues would probably have withdrawn.
What Lando Norris would have done in Piatris in this scene is of course pure speculation. But one can consider that he would not have commented in a comparable manner afterwards. Norris is not a major spokesman, he is a great driver, but maybe in the end he lacks the last hardness and perhaps also ruthlessness that has a verbality, and which now also shows a piatric more and more. Norris had gone into the weekend as a World Cup leader, but when it came to qualifying for everything, he broke into the wall, was only allowed to start from tenth and operated fourth on the day of the race.
Self -abuse via box radio
He scolded himself on Saturday via Boxenfunk on Saturday “Idiot”. It is not the first time that he puts him under pressure. Most recently in Sakhir, he parked his car wrong, for example, in the starting line -up and collected a time penalty. He has told several times how nervous and sometimes also plagued by self -doubt he is on race days: “Then sometimes I can hardly eat anything“The Briton confessed.
An impressive openness in a sport that hardly allows weakness. Does he have to be ashamed of it? On the contrary, the German ex-world champion Sebastian Vettel is found. “I find it a sign of strength that Lando opens. I believe that it is exemplary. In my time as a driver, it wasn’t.”
Good contact between Vettel and Norris
Vettel often writes news, supports him, gives him backing. And he calls it “Too bad “If Norris were attacked or assumed that he was honestly handled or assumed that he was vulnerable. Last year, when the Brit was in the title duel with Verstappen in the Red Bull, Red Bull’s motorsport consultant Helmut Marko knocked out a saying that was reminiscent of the Stone Age of Formula 1: Norris was “Mentally not strong enough to beat Verstappen”.
For this, the 81-year-old was criticized hard and later rowed back: Norris was not concerned with mental health, but about experience and maturity. Vettel said the “Times” that in his active time he always struggled with himself that he doubted himself and his skills: “I had it, she probably also had Lewis, but they also had other generations ahead of us. But they didn’t say them.”
Lewis Hamilton was one of the first to improve a very open handling of constant struggle and sometimes declining motivation in the phase, when Verstappen depended in the early 2020s. The “Sunday Times” said the now 40-year-old Ferrari pilot: “I have had to struggle with psychological problems all my life.”
Good culture in the current driver field
So Norris doesn’t have to feel alone with his honest way. And the beneficial in the current generation of the Formula 1 drivers is that it is unabated on the route that there are also open disputes (most recently between George Russell and Verstappen) or striking statements among drivers-but that confessions are not misused by the competitors.