Lando Norris says he hates when he sounds like he is crying/moaning on radio when he is actually relaxed, as Andrea Stella adds his thoughts.
Often it is regarded that McLaren’s Norris is frustrated with the team calls on his radio. His way of conversing somewhat showcases that, much like how it is with Max Verstappen sometimes or even to that extent of Lewis Hamilton.
When we compare that with his teammate Oscar Piastri, the Australian sounds much calmer even if he is frustrated with things. Norris notes that he hates when it comes out that he is crying or moaning when he is actually relaxed on the radio.
Whenever he listens himself back, he feels the same that it sounds like he is moaning when he is not in most cases. “As always, there’s been a few days of reviewing things, and making sure we look at things first,” said Norris. “I always say things that I never… when you look at it after you always think… I always make myself look like an idiot and you, know that I would never mean something like that, of course.
“So, it’s more that we made some mistakes with our calls and our strategy and things like that. A bit of it is just emotions at the time. I think I said it the other day, like I always sound like I’m crying or moaning on the radio. I don’t know why. I hate it but I feel like I’m really relaxed and chilled in the car but then I’m always the opposite when I listen to myself afterwards.
“So, yeah, there’s just always discussions, I guess, there’s always things that you’re trying to tell them and information that you’re trying to get. It’s just a couple of times when the information was not to the level it should have been – clearly. Then yeah, I guess it gets a little frustrating a couple of times. But stuff we’ve reviewed… it definitely won’t happen again,” summed up Norris, who says the team is chill with him.
It may look like there is disturbances between him and his engineer or the team but they are calm about it and knows that Norris doesn’t mean to disrespect anyone. “My team knows,” he said. “People always judge things from the outside and like to make comments but the team know how I work and how we say things and so forth.
“I’m not denying… I think at that time I was a bit frustrated with what I was getting told and things like that. I’m not denying at times, and also in the past, when you’re under pressure it gets a bit stressful at times, then I maybe don’t sound the most relaxed. But a lot of the time I am, and it maybe doesn’t come across that way, especially if you’re on the outside, listening to things.
“The team know how I work, and when I’m performing well, and when I’m not and they know how I work. Simple as that. As long as they know that, and I know how they do things and how they speak to me and how we interpret things, that’s all that’s, from my side, what’s needed. From what people see from the outside, I care, but in a way, I don’t care, because I’m doing my job and I just do that the best I can,” summed Norris.
McLaren team boss Stella defended Norris and his style. He thinks this is how champion drivers behave where any small miss affects them and they voice it out. He doesn’t have any issues with the Brit venting his points on the radio which is broadcasted.
“At the time Lando made the comment that I understand was broadcast, he was obviously frustrated,” said Stella. “He was frustrated because he realised that we were missing an opportunity by staying out one lap too much. And this is because the pit wall misread the situation. So Lando was addressing it. This is what champions do. We like this character.
“You know, we want to be heavily challenged by the driver. And we can be heavily challenged because our culture is strong. We can bear with that, you know. We’d rather have this kind of challenge rather than a passive driver that just takes everything and doesn’t contribute to the development of the team.
“So for us this episode is not a problem at all. I think we all also should be careful in extracting a single comment out of context and being over-judgmental about it. Actually, the review after Zandvoort has been very constructive and I’m very pleased with the, again, reinforcing the culture that we saw in the team and the drivers,” summed up Stella.
Here’s McLaren on review of Monza clash
Here’s Alexander Albon, Lando Norris on their incident
Here’s Lewis Hamilton apologising Oscar Piastri
Here’s Lando Norris on partnering Max Verstappen