Lando Norris says McLaren already had Ferrari in their list as potential constructors’ F1 rival for 2024 than Red Bull, who he thinks have a tougher job at hand.
It started handsomely for Red Bull in 2024 F1 season, but by mid-season they were reeling under pressure from McLaren and somewhat from Ferrari and Mercedes, as well. It was the Woking-based outfit, who eventually dethroned the Milton Keynes squad from the top spot.
Since then, Red Bull lost out to Ferrari for the second spot too. With three races to go, McLaren heads the pack with 593 points over the Italian team, who has 557. They are followed by the Austrian squad with 544 points – the three F1 outfits are separated by just the 49 points.
Indeed Red Bull is closer to Ferrari than Ferrari is to McLaren, but considering how the Top 2 outfits have scored with two drivers in the last few rounds, they are in a closer fight than Red Bull. And Norris has stated that McLaren always had Ferrari in their rival list for the constructors’ battle than Red Bull, who lost good chunk of points due to one car.
With the drivers’ title looking bleak, Andrea Stella stressed on the fact that the constructors’ has always been the goal. They tried to go for the drivers’, but Max Verstappen’s victory in Brazil has made it tougher now, where the Dutchman can seal the deal in Las Vegas itself.
“Our battle with Ferrari and the constructors’ has been evidenced 10 races ago,” said Norris to media. “It’s clear that the momentum McLaren and Ferrari had was way more than Red Bull. So Ferrari have been our biggest competitor since probably nine, ten races ago already.
“They were the guys we knew at the end of the year would be fighting, not Red Bull. From a constructors’ point of view, Red Bull have a much bigger job to do now. They can afford to take much bigger risks and do these [tactics] types of things and hope that they pay off. But I think we’ve been doing a good job, like I just said, staying out of trouble, keeping the cars clean.
“I think we’ve had a couple of unlucky weekends, both from either my side or Oscar’s side, like last two weekends. But we have to do a better job, especially against Ferrari. We need two cars up there fighting every weekend if we want to keep them behind,” summed up Norris, as Ferrari expects McLaren to do well in Qatar, with Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi providing opportunity to hit at the Woking-based outfit.
Frederic Vasseur joked about getting more updates in the coming races, while stressing that their approach remains the same to go race-by-race and not put too much pressure on themselves. “Lots of new parts after Brazil,” joked Vasseur, before adding: “Now we are focusing on next year’s project for months and nothing to come.
“We have the same approach for months now that we want to be focused race by race because for me it’s the best attitude. Just to be focused on what you can do and not to try to calculate and we keep the same one for the coming races. Honestly, I can’t remember the classification, I know the classification but not the points and I want to keep this up.”
Here’s more on GPDA letter
Here’s Ferrari signing IBM as partner
Here’s Ferrari trio on Brazil GP
Here’s Oscar Piastri taking blame
Here’s Lando Norris on losing out
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact