Lando Norris says he is pushing hard to take the F1 wins and fastest lap, but he can’t help if Max Verstappen is able to do his job to retain the lead.
After Daniel Ricciardo was able to take away the fastest lap point from McLaren’s Norris in F1 Singapore GP, the stat that popped up was that Red Bull’s Verstappen wouldn’t lose the world championship if he finishes second in the remaining six races of 2024 season.
It includes the sprint events and Norris winning all of it along with the fastest lap. Of course, this is if they are 1-2 at every race and it doesn’t count other position and or any retirement situation for either of the drivers.
For Norris, he says he is doing all he can do win and also score the fastest lap point. The pace in Singapore was ominous, but Verstappen is not dropping far behind and doing as much that he has to. The fight should go down to the wire especially with the involvement of Oscar Piastri, Sergio Perez along with the Ferrari and Mercedes F1 drivers in the mix.
“We have no idea, mate, I don’t know,” said Norris, when asked if the title is expected to go down the wire. “I can’t tell the future, so… I’m working as hard as I can, like I just said. I’m sure Red Bull, Max as well, so… I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of competition until the end of the year, and as a team, the only thing we can do is try and score the most points possible.
“That includes trying to win [and fastest lap]. Yeah, it’s, again, a silly question. I mean, we’re doing our best, and so are they. I hope so. I still have a lot of points I’ve got to catch up and it’s not going to be easy to do it. It’s against Red Bull and it’s against Max, the most dominant pairing you’ve ever seen in Formula 1, from last year.
“And that’s not necessarily changed in terms of… It’s the same team and it’s the same driver. But if Max keeps finishing second and Red Bull keep doing like they did this weekend, then nothing more I can do. So just focus on myself and focus on us as a team. That’s it. So I have some of the toughest competition that Formula 1 has ever seen in the sport.
“We are doing a better job as a team right now because my car and our car is quicker than theirs. But that’s just credit to the team doing an amazing job and being smarter and doing cooler things and creating mini DRS flaps and stuff. So it’s just because that’s the game and that’s the people we’re up against, the people who also do it and people who create these things.
“So I’m working my heart out, I’m working my butt off, to try and make sure that happens. He’s trying to make sure it doesn’t happen. So we’ll have to wait and find out,” summed up Norris, who stresses that McLaren hasn’t done much in the last few rounds with its car and so it will be down to how they execute the weekends in the title fight rather than car characteristics.
“We’ve not changed anything on the car from here to last weekend or the weekend before,” said Norris. “We’ve even had to make tweaks to some of our wings and things that people have complained about. But we’ve still had a great weekend and probably one of our most dominant weekends in Singapore. I don’t think that’s made the difference, honestly.
“It was just that the car’s been mega for a good amount of time. I’ve not been able to come out on top for quite a few of them when I felt like I had the pace and I had the ability to do. So some of that is down to being my own fault and not executing things well enough. So I’ve paid the price for not doing a good enough job at times. But when I lead after Turn 1 and things are a bit more straightforward then we can have a day like I had in Singapore.”
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