Lando Norris, McLaren, Miami International Autodrome, 2024

2024 Formula 1 driver rankings #3: Lando Norris

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Lando Norris refused to entertain suggestions he had blown a chance to win the world championship immediately after Max Verstappen sealed last year’s championship. Red Bull may not have repeated its consistent dominance of previous seasons, he acknowledged, but it was still the team to beat, most notably at the beginning of the year.

But eventually Norris accepted he could have taken the title: “It was within reach,” he conceded earlier this month. He ended the season 63 points off Verstappen, and while there were plenty of missed chances to make up that deficit, it’s easy to exaggerate how big an opportunity Norris missed last year.

Particularly considering he started the season without a win to his name, and in a car which didn’t look likely to deliver one. By the time he got his hands on McLaren’s game-changing upgrade in Miami, Norris had picked up a couple of podium finishes, while Verstappen had won four times out of five.

After the Safety Car helped him to a breakthrough win in Miami, Norris marked himself out as Verstappen’s biggest threat for the title, though not always convincingly. Norris came a close second at Imola but slipped up after leading in the rain in Montreal and squandered pole position with a poor start in Spain. The latter became a running theme of his season.

Lando Norris

Best Worst
GP start 1 (x8) 15
GP finish 1 (x4) 20
Points 374

At times it felt like Verstappen was the only one of the championship contenders who knew what he was fighting for and who he was up against. The Austrian Grand Prix weekend illustrated this clearly: Norris left the door open for Verstappen in the sprint race, throwing victory away, while the next day Verstappen defended his lead up to – and eventually over – the limit of legal defending.

From this point in the season Norris often had race-winning pace in the car, but too often missed chances to win or out-score Verstappen. His team copped most of the blame at Silverstone, but another sluggish getaway cost him in Hungary, and he had a poor day at Spa. Though he won dominantly in Verstappen’s backyard, once again Norris allowed his championship rival to beat him out of turn one.

Though Norris may be too soft on Verstappen on the track, he is invariably hard on himself out of the cockpit. But as the season went on he had less cause to be self-critical. In particular, he dialled out the kind of errors which previously dogged him in qualifying, and consistently strong starting positions helped him gather valuable points. In Azerbaijan, where he was enormously unlucky in qualifying, he fought back brilliantly in the race, passing Verstappen for a fine fourth place.

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After comprehensively seeing Verstappen off in Singapore (despite two conspicuous errors) Norris clashed with his title rival again in the next two races. He was the architect of his own downfall in Austin, yet again losing a position to Verstappen at the start, but showed good awareness of his rival’s increasingly borderline tactics in Mexico to salvage a valuable second place.

Having lost the lead from pole to George Russell in Brazil, Norris regained the advantage when conditions reached their worst, but the timings of the Virtual Safety Car and red flag worked against him, and Verstappen’s win effectively ended the title fight. The Red Bull driver delivered the coup de grace in Las Vegas where McLaren endured a rare off-weekend.

However, after one of his few significant errors of the season in Qatar, Norris rebounded superbly in the finale, winning under pressure from the Ferrari drivers to secure the constructors’ championship for his team. If McLaren begin this year as strongly as they ended the last, it will be down to Norris to prove he knows how to deal with Verstappen.

RaceFans’ driver rankings are based partly on the scores awarded to drivers for their performances in each round as well as other factors.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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42 comments on “2024 Formula 1 driver rankings #3: Lando Norris”

  1. I would not have problems had Norris been placed lower on the list.

    His passivity, continuous mistakes, lack of aggression, and lack of urgency were irritating so many times that it almost felt unfair that the car was good enough for him to win four races and finish as runner-up while others could only watch.

    It was not a great season for him, maybe not even good. What may redeem it is that he can use it to improve as a driver and deliver the drives Mclaren expects of him as team leader from now on.

    1. your comment screams frustration :). Sure, the man made some mistakes, but telling things like “it was maybe not even a great season”, or that he needs to redeem himself, is just a dumb conclusion, IMHO of course ;)

    2. People are too harsh on Lando.

      By almost any measure it was a very good season. Unfortunately he happens to be up against one of the all time greats at the peak of his powers. I don’t think anyone else on the grid could have beaten Verstappen in the same situation, Charles would have also fallen short.

      1. In the same situation, perhaps. But that situation – a huge head start to the season’s points – favoured Verstappen. Put them in equal cars and I’d back Leclerc to run Verstappen close all season, 50/50 for the title.

        1. ”a huge head start to the season’s points” ooh that old argument again. Verstappen outscored the whole field before AND after Miami, do your homework, or be sincere…

      2. He started on pole 8 times and won 4 races.
        Of those 8 poles, the only one which he would have trouble bringing it home had he had a clean start would be COTA, in which Ferrari was quicker.

        There were also the races Mclaren was the fastest car but he fumbled his fast lap. All in all, he could’ve won 10+ races, or at least tie with Max’s number. It was within his reach.

        It was a very tame challenge, Max was probably more worried about the form of his team each weekend than about Norris.

        1. Edvaldo, there are other drivers out there with far worse records on that front though – what of Leclerc’s record of having started on pole 26 times, but only managing to turn 5 of those poles into race victories?

          1. If i play by the same rule i applied to Norris, in which i did not count COTA because McLaren was not the fastest car on race day, then Leclerc should’ve won maybe ten races out of these 26.

            In some, the car broke down while leading (Bahrein 2019, Spain 2022), in others the team completely ruined his chances with strategic blunders (Singapore 2019, Monaco 2022)

            And in most, he hadn’t the fastest car to start ahead and pull away anyway. When he had it, he often did exactly that.

    3. Norris entered the 2024 season not ever having a truly competitive car. He had not won a race. However as a rookie he
      had done extremely well against Sainz and effectively finished the career of Riccardo. He won in Miami and broke his duck but he had good fortune in that race and Lando had not had a pole until Spain teb races in which he lost to Max. His first error if you want to call it that. Max had won 7 of them. Then people started talking about Lando possibly being in a WDC race. The guy had only won one race. The expectation was all media hype and Lando was simply taking each race as they come. He then went on to get 7 poles. You give him no credit for that talking only about where he had lost first place. However He won three more races. He has had an exceptional year and his last drive was exceptional. He is not team leader but drives like a team leader and was ranked the third best driver in the world. Max won his first world championship in his eighth year. Next year is Landos 7th and he is following a similar path. Lando will win a WDC by being
      a brilliant driver , great tyre management, and one of the two best qualifiers. He race as good as anybody but I give him credit for keeping it clean.

    4. These are fair points, but a ranking is all relative. The only two drivers who clearly had better seasons will be ranked ahead, and for all his mistakes and lack of key results, I don’t think the case to put Russell, Gasly, Sainz, Piastri or anyone else ahead of Norris is particularly strong.

      Russell might have the best argument, but I’m not entirely convinced: he seems to get full credit for beating Hamilton ‘the legend’, but Hamilton gets marked down for not reaching that level we expect from him. It’s hard to have it both ways. If Hamilton is the 10th best driver on the grid in 2024, (marginally) beating him isn’t exactly an amazing feat either.

      I suppose it’s just unfortunate that Verstappen is one step ahead of others of his generation. It’ll be the job of Leclerc, Norris and Russell to close that gap. But, also, it’s a bit late for that. Verstappen is already a 4x WDC. These guys have all been in the sport for the better part of a decade. It’s now time to deliver, not to ‘show promise’.

      1. Exactly about hamilton, that’s what I kept thinking too: beating 2024 hamilton or 2020 vettel can’t give the same credit you’d get for beating 2018 hamilton or 2013 vettel.

    5. El Pollo Loco
      30th January 2025, 22:19

      10/10 in my prediction of what RF’s top 10 order would be.

  2. So I got NOR & LEC positions the wrong way around.

    1. That’s a very avoidable mistake if you think about leclerc’s improved consistency this year and the many mistakes by norris, they’ve both been fast, so norris had nothing on leclerc.

      1. El Pollo Loco
        30th January 2025, 22:20

        Indeed. Everyone noted Leclerc’s incredible consistency and high level of performance while Norris’ season has been characterized in the exact opposite manner.

  3. It’s possible to feel some sympathy for Norris because of the sudden ‘realization’ among fans, punters and maybe some of the teams that maybe there was a title fight on last year. Unrealistic perhaps given Verstappen’s early season lead. It’s easy to do the maths, calculate the mistakes made by Norris and McLaren, and concluded that they messed up. But that excludes a critical factor: it was far easier for Verstappen to be consistent under less pressure and far easier for Norris to make mistakes under the pressure of those expectations. When Verstappen comes under pressure, he’s invariably fast and consistent but his racing does enter ‘stress mode’ where he plays with the border of the permissible. So had McLaren’s season started better, maybe it would have turned out a lot different.
    It’s a big maybe though as I’m totally unconvinced that Norris has found a solution yet to racing Verstappen. And also I’m sceptical that we’ve seen the last of his poor starts. Should find out soon enough when the new season begins.

    1. You keep repeating the same false argument, is it that hard for you to come to terms to reality?
      Verstappen outscored Norris and the rest of the field before Miami, AND Verstappen outscored Norris and the rest if the field after Miami. He would have won the championship without his early lead.

      1. I was playing devil’s advocate really as I thought it was an underwhelming performance by Norris overall and a strong (if at times excessive) performance from Verstappen. You could say the pre-Monza lead was down to the car differences while the post-Monza lead was down to Verstappen’s talent and hard racing to which Norris had no answer.

    2. El Pollo Loco
      30th January 2025, 23:18

      Fair enough in terms of the title fight, but he continued to be outscored by Max in totality. So, it’s not just that he failed to make it a fight, he failed to even inch forward with a far more competitive package.

      Norris is still one of the best drivers on the grid, but I think we can safely rule out the idea he’ll ever be in the league of the three proven champions on the grid (I’ll say at their peak for the two older ones to simplify that) and only time will tell how he’ll stack up to your Leclercs and Russells over a career length span. My personal instinct tells me falls right between the two.

      1. I’d more or less agree with that assessment, though I’ve always thought Russell a better all round driver than Norris.

        1. El Pollo Loco
          31st January 2025, 15:57

          I agree with you. Russell is likely a better all around driver at this point. I think Norris maybe has an edge on peak pace, but Russell seems to have fewer weaknesses even if he’s been fairly error prone himself.

  4. Hakk The Rack
    30th January 2025, 14:00

    Watching and cheering for Norris in 2024 was as painful as watching Hill in 1995. Always pro-mistake, passive under potential attacks and always outsmarted by Verstappen/Schumacher.

    1. this is a very good analogy. Plus, what also felt very similar to that era is when the weather conditions got really tricky – Ver / Schu were a class above.

  5. People will say Norris deserves lower, but #3 to me is the perfect position. He was good and he firmly beat his teammate, but he wasn’t good enough as Verstappen and he made more mistakes than Leclerc.

    He did have many outstanding weekends. 3 of his wins were complete and utter domination. He showed many moments of brilliant pace. If Piastri was the only McLaren driver we would have had no idea how quick the car could really be.

    2025 could be a season for the ages if the top 3 all have competitive cars for the entire season (but when was the last time Ferrari didn’t develop backward mid-season…)

  6. Stephen Taylor
    30th January 2025, 17:14

    Verstappen had huge points lead after several races so winning the title for Lando whilst not Why does Keith assume Verstappen will remain the main to beat in 2025 ? Red Bull’s trajectory is only going down because of their out of date windtunnel and I they will not get back to their best until the middle of . Lando is only considered too soft because the rulemakers haven’t done thir job in making a set of rules that does not allow Verstappen to employs . The kind of of tactics where Verstappen is allowed not to give space and force others willingly off the track is wrong. The fact the the FIA has/is redrafting the rules of wheel to wheel comabat again shows that Verstappen’s tactics have never been acceptable. hose Schumacher-esque tactics should have banned years agoThat being said Austria and the start at COTA are times where Lando really let himself . Also I thnk Keith and many others is being naive to assume Verstappen as title favourite next year I think to win the title . Verstappen I feel is not going to Lando’s main concern this year but I could be wrong . I think the the main opposition will be his team mate and the two Ferrari and even if Verstappen is in involved in a four or five way title battle he wwill not able to play the same high risk ‘Lets cause an accident with Lando ‘ card so much this year as that will benefit Piastri and Ferrari Also I think Lando showed he learned his lesson in Mexico with Max on wheel to wheel stuff. Also the start problems have to a clutch calibration issue as if his his engineer kept advising the use of incorrect settings. It’s not not about being able to deal with Verstappen it is about making sure Lando focuses on doing his own job in the possibly way and not worry too much about what others are doing . I often felt when he was starting from pole ahead of Max he tightened up as if he was was overthinking about what Verstappen was doing instead of getting himself in the right zone . I also think Lando’s reluctance to meet fire with fire in battle with Verstappen was the reflection of Lando being overly image conscious . Forget upsetting a few meaningless trolls on social media Lando and just go for it .

    1. El Pollo Loco
      31st January 2025, 11:10

      OK, but he couldn’t even outscore Max after the points lead was built. So, if your argument is that Lando has what it takes to be in Max’s league, that argument kind of immediately collapses. If your argument is that he’s capable of winning a championship with the best car from the get go, then I agree. I also agree it is naive to view Max as the title favorite for 2025 based on how the season ended.

  7. Lando is too harsh on himself. He needs to improve and focus his criticism where it is useful rather than be brutal. I think he has learned to improve his starts and this is big. If he can rack off the poles he can be one of those drive-off-into-the-sunset champions. He did put in some good performances, particularly when going for fastest lap in many races.

    It would have been nice to see someone other than Max win, but his driving was just too good, particularly in Brazil where Lando was poor.

    Some of his remarks were odd from time to time, like suggesting Max’s transcendent wet weather drive had nothing to do with talent, but I think Lando will get things right in his head when he has had time to reflect.

    Leclerc was clearly superior, but I have to insist on Lando being third. There were errors, but credit is due for when he drove well. He’s my pick for this year, but that’s more because I don’t think Red Bull will be in there and that Charles and Lewis will neutralise each other.

    1. I don’t really think Norris actually said that Max’ driving in Brazil was “nothing to do with talent”. I think it was more that Norris rued HIS OWN chances being very much influenced by what the weather brought (instead of even thinking about Max in that moment).

  8. Norris felt a little bit like Leclerc in 2022. Too inexperienced and mistake prone for their first championship challenge. I think Norris has it in him to succeed as long as he learns from these mistakes.

  9. I think it was quite generous to rank him 3rd. I quite agree with Rosberg here, Norris was the weakest title contender F1 had seen since a long time (to the extend he could never get really close to Max even with the help of his teammate).

    1. Tbh, piastri couldn’t really help norris much because he was often way behind.

      1. El Pollo Loco
        30th January 2025, 23:12

        Indeed, which makes one wonder why Oscar is ranked #6. I don’t think any sane person would expect Hamilton or Alonso not to do have done a far better job than Oscar and probably Norris too for that matter.

  10. Lando will never be a serious contender until he cuts out the mistakes & takes on other drivers more aggressively. He’s a bit of a walk over when it comes to that.

    1. El Pollo Loco
      30th January 2025, 23:35

      That goes without saying and extends to all the championship hopefuls like Leclerc, Russell and Norris who’ve all shown great speed. But we’ve had many blindingly fast drivers in F1 over the years who failed to win a title or did win titles but are still not placed among the icons of F1.

      Speed is assumed. Showing elite levels of speed over and over again quali and races under immense pressure without making more than 1-2 mistakes a season as well as the ability to prevail in a wheel-to-wheel battle has always been what’s separated your Sennas, Schumacher, Alonsos, Hamiltons and Verstappens from Hakkinens, Montoyas, Raikkonens, Buttons, Vettels and Norrises.

  11. I think 3rd is probably fair. He had a lot more pressure on his shoulders than anyone else (except Max) so that factors into it.

    We’re going to need Lando 2.0 though if there’s any hope of him beating one of the top 10 drivers in F1 in a close battle.

  12. I’d say 3rd is a little generous.

    I think the main thing he needs to work on is his robustness in dealing with other drivers, both on and off the track. If he thinks there’s an issue he needs to say it and not water it down later or backtrack when nothing fundamental has changed. I’m still of the opinion McLaren need to work on the quali vs race balance, and improve their starts, as I put Lando’s quali vs race win record more down to that than his issues (though his mistakes definitely cost them points).

    It’ll be interesting to see how different Lando might deal with pressure if McLaren get a great start and build an early lead in the championship, and RB are having to chase. Max when under pressure (e.g. Hungary) is entirely possible to have his own issues, but others need to push that situation more. Same with Lewis, though I feel he’s far less likely than Max to be challenging for wins regularly anyway. There’s a lot about the new season to look forward to.

    1. @mysticarl I thinkg your right the ranking and Points says he is around 3 but if you calculate his car and his mistakes and bad starts he would be more in the 4-6 position.

  13. Paul (@frankjaeger)
    31st January 2025, 1:12

    Lando had the hardest job of all. He made mistakes under pressure and for some people that eclipses his tremendous 1 lap pace and frequently superior race pace compared to Piastri. That Mclaren ended up being barely the fastest car but it wasn’t for the first 10 races. 3rd is about right in my opinion.

  14. Can we stop pretending Norris was ever in title contention? Of course he made mistakes and was too passive against Max at times but we’re forgetting McLaren didn’t come out the box strong enough and that allowed Max to build a huge lead in the championship. Make up whatever narrative you will, Norris was never in touching distance. Max is just too consistent to throw away any points and after the first seven races, the title was a matter of when.

    1. El Pollo Loco
      31st January 2025, 16:03

      Yeah, we went through that above… We also went through how Norris didn’t just fail to close the gap, but continued to be outscored. So, we can stop pretending that this is just about Norris’ failure to win the title?

  15. Lando was never ever during the season in contention for the driver title. That’s just what the British media wanted us to believe. But he did get a sample of what it is to fight for it. And a painful lesson that was as he might never get this competitive again with McLaren. It is more likely though that he will have learned from it and McLaren will probably still have a race-winning car in 2025. Which will make F1 the coming year all that more exciting.

  16. Undeserved. Subpar performance vs the car capability.

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