Lando Norris puts down complete BS story about joining Mercedes, while he adds on McLaren’s woes and how to readjust goals.
Amid all the news around Ferrari and their situation, the media is not far off to create speculation around Mercedes and McLaren too especially involving Lewis Hamilton and Norris respectively. Any time a F1 team has a low run, rumours starts to float.
In Hamilton’s case, it has been long that has been happening and with him having no contract, it does make sense to speculate too. But for Norris, he does have a secured contract with McLaren and still his name is doing round wildly.
This is only happening because of the low point that McLaren finds itself in but Norris has put down those BS stories. He reckons it is something that he started living with because these will keep on happening throughout his F1 career.
He doesn’t see the McLaren situation as a crisis just yet and is banking on the F1 team doing something like Ferrari did from 2021 to 2022 or what Aston Martin has done from 2022 to 2023. They are clear and good examples to take inspiration from.
But the key question remains if McLaren can do it. They do have a infrastructure programme in place and it will be now about execution. The F1 team has undergone some changes in personnel with James Key’s departure and David Sanchez’s return.
Stories around Mercedes –
Norris: “Yeah, I guess I’m at a point where it doesn’t affect me in any way. I’m, I guess, fine with it to an extent, apart from when it’s just complete BS, that people try and come up with, and completely fake stories that people make up. I think, to a certain point, harsh criticism is acceptable. It makes sense: you don’t like it when it’s too much and people in the team start to get affected by it.
“Especially because maybe for some of them, they don’t understand so much… or don’t know so many of the truths, but I think we do a good job within the team, within McLaren explaining things to people, telling them what’s going on, explaining my side of the story and things that go on with me, things that go on within teams. So yeah, it’s tough, it’s the world we live in. It’s just media – maybe not you in particular – it’s just what you’ve got to deal with sometimes. So, I’m fine with it, the team are fine with it.”
McLaren in crisis –
Norris: “No, it’s far from that. I don’t know, everyone makes it sound a lot worse than it is. And calling it crisis is far from that at all and it’s nothing close to it. So, no, we’re confident we can get some good points, I think it’s a close fight for… with Valtteri, with Alfa and a lot of those teams. Towards the top four teams, it’s a very big jump. But I’m confident we can be in that fight. I don’t think we’re that far away. It was made very clear and very early on that we’re far from where we want to be. And like you said, for McLaren’s expectations and who we are as a team, we’re far from where we want to be. But we have a very clear plan. I think it’s very clear from everyone back in MTC and here what we need to achieve and want to achieve. It’s just going about setting it and achieving it, which is our next call.”
Where to be in 2023 –
Norris: “Where did I want to be? It’s clear, but where we all want to be is clear: we want to be towards the top. And I think that’s everyone’s dream, it’s every team’s dream in the whole grid but when you’re realistic, it’s between where we are now and those top four teams currently. So I think what Aston have done is this clear example and what Ferrari did between ’21 and ‘22 was a clear example of what we need to achieve and want to achieve. And it’s clear that it’s achievable. So we just got to go out and do it. I think we have the people, we have so many things that we need. We’re not doing a good enough job with what we have but we all know that and we know that we have some more things coming but at the same time, we have to do better than what we’re doing currently.”
Can McLaren do it –
Norris: “Yeah, infrastructure always helps but we should be doing better than we are now with what we have. That’s also clear. We’ll see. I think there’s things you can achieve during the season. Harder to achieve them during the season than during the winter but there’s no huge changes. It’s not like we need to change philosophy or change car or anything like that. A lot of what we have already is working well, as Andrea has mentioned, what we have in the wind tunnel and what we have on track is correlating well at the same time and we have obviously a lot of new things coming.
“A lot of it in Formula 1 is time. You’re always against it but at the same time you always need it and and sometimes you just have to be patient still. So that’s what we’re doing. Everyone’s working very hard from that side of things. There’s nothing that they’re doing that I would say that we’re not in terms of going out to achieve what we want to achieve. So we’ll stick to our plan and that’s good enough for me.”
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