On the way to August in 2017, McLaren was in a very tough place. The team had only 11 points to the first 11 rounds of the season, and nine of them had come to the Hungarian doctor – the last race for the summer closure.
But before many of the team could take some free time to lick wounds, there was a test in the season to handle. There were two that year, starting with Bahrain in April and then running for another two days at the Hungaroring before the summer vacation started.
On the second of those days, the team led a 17-year-old Lando Norris in modern Formula 1 machines for the first time. Norris was in the middle of a title-winning European Formula 3 season, prior to his Formula 2 campaign and the subsequent step to race in F1 18 months later.
Even at the time of his promotion, the times were still not easy for McLaren. The first season of Norris ended with the team that led midfield, but far away from the top three teams. There was progress, but only one stage to show from the year, and it ended 594 points behind Mercedes.
From that moment on to dominating the rankings this year is a change.
“I am proud of exactly what we have achieved and the journey we have had,” Norris tells Racer. “I wish I could have won races earlier and we had the chance to do what we did before this year? 100%, but everyone just has a different chance in life.
‘When Lewis [Hamilton] Came in Formula 1, they dominated the championships. It was very different than when I arrived in 2019.
“I am really not busy about things like that. I would have liked to win races earlier, but it is also just a cool story that I was staying with the team, as long as I did when I had other opportunities in other places and elsewhere, where I might have won races and continued to reach more at an earlier point.”
Last year, the title of McLaren’s first constructors since 1998, but the drivers avoided Norris when Max Verstappen had built up too big. This time the double is on, but calling which from Norris and Oscar Piastri will take the individual crown is still a gamble.
“It’s a good thing that we are only like a team [fighting for the title]”Norris admits.” That’s great to have. And only the thought, it’s only us two, it’s great.
“Then you have the advantage of, you can see everything that does each other. But it is also a bad thing, sometimes because he will have his better weekends, I will have my better weekends. He can easily see where he is a bit off or where he has to improve, and at the same time I can, in a weekend when he is in a weekend, in a weekend when he is a better job, then I can easily see where he does where.
“So you can escape less. You can’t easily drive on your good weekends, because we are both very good at inventing or learning from each other very, very quickly, which makes it even harder in a sense. By the end of the weekend you are both just as strong as each other.
“So it’s difficult, but nothing else has changed. We can still get along with each other. We still talk the same amount. All meetings are the same. I think the difference is when we are free to race, but in a very different way to last year.
Norris got his first taste of a modern F1 car as a teenage F3 leader while testing in Hungary in 2017. Mark Sutton/Getty Images
“I think there are a number of different experiences, but I think it’s a good thing, only that I am against him and him against me. And that is not all we can concentrate on – it is still just as much as after occasionally to the others – but from the point of view it is what it is. But it changes nothing but just do your best out of your best.”
Although the target continues to perform the best of its power, Norris admits that fighting for a title makes everything so important, which in turn may mean that the drivers are concentrating on the details with even greater attention.
But there are other aspects where he must learn to take a step back, especially with regard to how invested fans and media are in his performances and to become the hope of champion.
“You have to learn to be more sensitive to all those things,” he says. “And that is not in a bad way; it is just that you cannot trust those things. It is not good to trust those things so much. It is probably something that I … Not trusted, but just too easy to be struck and convinced too much.
“Now, of course you like to say great things, and it hurts when people say bad things, but it is. It should not influence anything more than that kind of short moments when you read something or that you see something or whatever it is, and that is also one of the parts that come up with experience.
“I think it is very different for everyone. Some people come in, can’t give it up and not be struck by it. Some people, I would say more, I came across quite heavily. But I learned how I can deal with those things and more numb for those things.”
The use of Norris of the word ‘stunned’ does not mean that he ignores comments or critics, but the 25-year-old says he is trying to take the positive points that come from people who have him, while they do not have a weight of responsibility for their reactions when things are not going well.
“It is not that I do not appreciate them, because if I have all my fans and supporters and so on, they want me to do it better than anyone and that is great,” he says. “And you try to ride all of that and use it to your advantage. But that of course means in times of more disappointment, there are more people who complain if things are not going well, and you just try not to be influenced.
“I think you should almost force yourself to be more sensitive to outdoor situations and stay more about what you do as the individual, and listen to my narrow team around me – my trainers, my engineers, my friends – then keep a bit of the fact that those people can really lead you and lead you in different directions because they are all for you.
“But from the outside it is a bit more good and bad sound, and you have to learn to be more sensitive.”
Dealing with all the different aspects of a title fight is clearly a challenge, but a welcome one. And a true Norris could only have dreamed of when he first stepped behind the wheel of a McLaren car in Hungary in Hungary eight years ago.
“What makes me happier now, above all, is that we are in the position we are now,” he says. “This year is our time to show what we have. It has not been, what more than 15 years or something? For us to show what we have this year, is quite exciting.
“I am proud to stay with the team and also exactly what we have been able to achieve in the last 24 months. I think that is the coolest part of all this.”
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