Lando Norris has conceded he could have won the world championship last year, after losing the title to Max Verstappen by 73 points.
The McLaren driver previously claimed he would not have won the title last season even if he had driven perfectly. However he has now conceded he had a realistic chance of beating Verstappen.“It was within reach,” said Norris in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “This year I need to fix a few things, work on some things and come back stronger and that’s what I’m ready to do.”
Norris won more races than any driver besides Verstappen last year. His victory in the season finale at Yas Marina last month secured the constructors’ championship for McLaren. He said he’s keen to repeat the feat this year but also wants the “selfish” triumph of winning the drivers’ title.
“So the team have remained very focussed. It was easy for all of them to get back and just go ‘we’re good, we’ve done it now, let’s just relax’. They’ve done the opposite. They’ve gone ‘we want even more’ and they’ve worked even harder to try and find new things for this year. So I think they’ve turned these expectations into positive things, into more motivation and more drive to want it again.
“For myself, as much as I want to win the constructors every single year, I also want that selfish one, to win the drivers’ championship. You need a good team behind you and I think that’s exactly what I’ve got.
“I came close-ish last year. I was still always a bit far behind, but I could smell it. I had that feeling of like, okay, this is kind of what it’s like.”
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Esploratore (@esploratore1)
22nd January 2025, 11:20
At last, better late than never, as the saying goes.
Would’ve been a much closer title fight had he kept the number of mistakes to a minimum.
Stephen Taylor
22nd January 2025, 12:01
Personally I think think it was long shot given the points advantage . What I see this as is admission that he and team let themselves by not pushing Max to the last race of the season . Also Max had a very poor last last race of season but you can guarantee that Max would have driven differently in Abu Dhabi . McLaren also needs to have a race winning ar right off the bat rather than starting to the season slowly and relying on in-season upgrades to get the car up there. I kind of feel Lando’s main competition for the WDC won’t be Verstappen it will be his team mate and the two Ferrari. Also Racefans the final points gap between Max and Lando was 63 points not 73 points.
mrt
22nd January 2025, 12:35
Verstappen still scored more points from Miami onwards. That argument you keep repeating is false, the pointadvantage didn’t matter in the end…
Stephen Taylor
22nd January 2025, 13:06
That’s an on simplistic view. Lando did make mistakes but the team also let down him down several times .The deficit after Miami was 53 points more than what Vertappen oveturned against Leclerc in 2022 . The period that cost Lando the most was not winning any of the races between Canada and Hungary.
mrt
22nd January 2025, 18:15
All irrelevant factors. In the end, Verstappen outscored Norris before Miami AND he outscored him after Miami. No matter how many semantic tricks and mental gymnastics you tru to perform.
Dex
23rd January 2025, 10:12
He let the team down more often than vice versa, if you really must look at it that way. And I don’t really see how they let him down to be honest. If you talk about forcing Piastri into a support role sooner, that would make exactly zero difference. They had the fastest car for long enough, also decent strategy and great pit stop times. The car was driveable after each upgrade, and those upgrades actually worked every single time. I say well done McLaren.
El Pollo Loco
22nd January 2025, 22:08
Stephen is a huge Norris fan/apologist. Possibly the only person I’ve seen who can’t fully admit Norris blew it. A few times I’ve seen him admit that Lando only has himself to blame, but then he goes right back to saying implying Norris never really had a chance because Lando only had a better car than Max for 80% of the season.
bosyber (@bosyber)
22nd January 2025, 11:33
Now let’s hope that at least privately, the team also admits (admitted, really) they almost actively made that harder for him than they needed to.
El Pollo Loco
22nd January 2025, 22:13
The maximum number of points you could conceivably blame McLaren for amounts to almost nothing (roughly 15 max). Maybe had Lando been driving like a WDC they would have been more open to making Oscar the wingman with so many races still to go. Alas, he wasn’t.
Edvaldo
22nd January 2025, 12:06
He realized it since winning the last race and seeing how straightforward it is to win when you start ahead driving the fastest car.
Craig
22nd January 2025, 12:27
There was a chance, but it was always incredibly slim
AlexS
22nd January 2025, 13:00
Slim? No. It was clearly possible with right mind.
Austrian GP showed that Norris did not have it. He could have won there with tactical patience.
Craig
22nd January 2025, 13:25
It was slim because it relied on an extremely specific and unlikely set of circumstances to happen, such as McLaren being consistently best, other teams not taking points off them and Red Bull having a completely collapse in performance to the point of struggling to score points on occasion.
None of those happened, which led to a much more entertaining second half of the season but meant the championship was never going to under any threat.
anon
22nd January 2025, 13:46
Exactly – most people were writing off any prospect of Norris challenging for the WDC long before then, as any prospective challenge relied too heavily on factors outside of his control or that of his team.
It ignored that it relied on other teams taking points only from Verstappen, unrealistically assumed that McLaren would always be the top team, rather than the more realistic picture of performances fluctuating depending on circuit characteristics, and an unrealistic assumption that Red Bull would always be weak in the latter races, when their dips in form were also rather circuit and tyre specific.
In retrospect, Norris’s chances were rather exaggerated by those with an incentive to put out particular narratives about the latter half of the season.
David BR (@david-br)
22nd January 2025, 14:02
I think a lot of fans (OK I’m talking about myself here) just wanted to see Verstappen challenged finally after two seasons of total dominance, given Red Bull’s refusal to sign a competitive team mate. So it did briefly seem like there was a spark of competition in the WDC. The problems, though, were the points deficit, Norris having a competitive and feisty team mate, Mercedes and Ferrari also sometimes being the fastest or second fastest cars, and Norris himself being very far from optimizing his performances (likewise McLaren making some big strategy mistakes, including in qualifying).
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
22nd January 2025, 14:20
The math is very simple: if you take away the points norris lost through mistakes, he ends up with more points than verstappen, it’s not unrealistic, it’s simply performing like his opponent.
El Pollo Loco
22nd January 2025, 22:21
The chances were not exaggerated. Portraying Max’s lead as insurmountable after five races was/is though. Lando had a better car than Max for 80% of the season and forget about winning the title, he couldn’t even outscore Max during that period. A true failure of a season even if we cling to the fiction that he only had a slim chance of winning the title. The idea that Norris winning relied on factors outside his control his ludicrous. It only reached that point after he had failed to make any dent in Max’s lead with the season winding down. That’s the only time a come back became unrealistic and the title relied on factors outside of his control.
David BR (@david-br)
22nd January 2025, 13:49
On reflection, had their positions been reversed, I think Verstappen would have made up the points difference and won last season. Does that mean Lando could have won? No, because he’s not Max Verstappen.
Yes (@come-on-kubica)
22nd January 2025, 15:27
I don’t verstappen would have – Red Bull geared the entire team and car towards him. I think he would have had more of a rift with Oscar than in a title race.
David BR (@david-br)
22nd January 2025, 17:23
@come-on-kubica It’s a significant factor to include but Verstappen would be (is) way faster than Piastri, so I think he’d be less compromised by poor grid places and poor starts compared to Norris. Still leaves space for McLaren to mess up though (Red Bull are by now an ultra-efficient title-winning racing team, McLaren still some way off).
El Pollo Loco
22nd January 2025, 22:26
Max walks away with the title if positions are reversed no problem. So, would pre-rally accident Kubica. Max outscored Norris during the 80% of the season Norris had the better, at times far better, car. Norris simply lacks the ruthlessly consistent ability to perform at elite levels that drivers like Max, Alonso and Hamilton have shown. It doesn’t mean Lando isn’t a great driver. It just means that he’s not in the same class as the all time greats of F1.
CarWars (@maxv)
24th January 2025, 12:03
Agreed in the Mclaren the risk of mistakes and wrong setups seemed alot lower. It was fast in nearly all sessions directly.
Max struggled nearly all races after Miami finding a setup. Sometimes ending in a setup that in race would get him 5-6th on car merit. Lucked and pushed his way into a few higher finishes as well. In weekend with sprint races it was even more evident. sometimes the sprint race was an extra practice session to make something out of the race. Don’t think many people would have gotten the Max out of this Redbull, only few have this drive around these issues kind of skills, as can be seen by Perez’ struggle.
Miane
22nd January 2025, 18:57
I agree. Leclerc could also win the championship in the Mclaren.
David BR (@david-br)
23rd January 2025, 11:12
I’d like to think so, less certain for me than Max though.
baasbas
23rd January 2025, 17:02
@Miane:
I’m not so sure actually. He has his moments but in my opinion he is not consistent enough. And I think ultimately Sainz is slower, he did expose another weakness (if you could call it that). Tactically Sainz has been better I feel.
I have my hopes on coming season though. I hope the arrival of Hamilton will finally be the kick in his behind to up his game
El Pollo Loco
24th January 2025, 10:57
Last year was truly the first season in which he made almost zero mistakes, but he didn’t think he was in a title fight. So, it wasn’t quite an acid test yet. However, I do rank consider Leclerc a cut above Lando.
matt90
26th January 2025, 0:12
Just a point that while it’s good he admits it was possible, he would have been only the fifth ever driver (excluding Farina in the first year of the championship) and first since Rosberg in 1982 to win the title the same year as his first win. Yes he’s a lot more experienced than a lot of past champions and in his 6th season, but he was still only 24 for most of the season and I reckon there’s a bit of a mental shift required to go from never winning an F1 race to fighting for the championship.
The full list of drivers to win the title the same year as their first win is Farina, Brabham, G Hill, Hulme, and K Rosberg I believe.