Lando Norris will not leave McLaren, regardless of whether he loses the F1 drivers’ championship to Oscar Piastri this season, according to Mark Gallagher.<\/p>\n
Despite the perception of the British driver, that he lacks the mental toughness of his team-mate, the former F1 broadcaster and commentator insists the Woking-based squad rates the 25-year-old “very highly” and is committed to its current line-up, with both drivers on long-term deals.<\/p>\n
However, the emergence of Piastri, who leads their intra-team title fight by 31 points with eight rounds of the campaign remaining, has led some to suggest the papaya outfit will back the Australian over Norris in the future.<\/p>\n
That cuts against the ethos of the team, and everything either driver or Andrea Stella or Zak Brown has said about their pairing.<\/p>\n
The two are imbued with a loyalty to McLaren, which places a premium on a team-first perspective and in return, the team is attempting to provide a level and fair playing field for them to fight their battle on.<\/p>\n
So, when asked if he felt Norris could leave the reigning constructors’ champions if he falls short of taking the drivers’ crown and struggles to shake off the narrative surrounding him, Gallagher disagreed.<\/p>\n
“No, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any chance of that happening,” he told Betway. “McLaren rate him very highly, and I\u2019ve been massively impressed with Lando\u2019s speed in both qualifying and races.<\/p>\n
“Looking at the data and analysis of individual laps, there\u2019s hardly anything between him and Oscar. They\u2019re both really strong – it\u2019s a fantastic pairing.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, someone has to win the championship. But the other shouldn\u2019t feel damaged by that – that\u2019s just the way things fall.<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t think missing out would hurt Lando\u2019s trajectory. That failure in Zandvoort wasn\u2019t his fault. Yes, he\u2019s made mistakes in the past, but the real question is: do you learn from them?”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tThe gloves are off<\/p>\n
Gallagher highlighted how Norris’ open and honest approach to the F1 press is used against him, which his self-critical nature turned into a weapon for his rivals to use against him.<\/p>\n
But he maintains that the time for any such talk is now over and that the nine-time grand prix winner must view Piastri as the enemy in their “gloves-off” fight for the title.<\/p>\n
“I think Piastri has made a few steps forward, and Lando has a very similar pace to him,” he added. “The key now is whether Lando can address the so-called fragility – and I say ‘so-called’ because the media love to speculate about his self-doubt.<\/p>\n
“He spoke about his mental health on the High Performance Podcast, but the truth is, he\u2019s at the pinnacle of world motorsport now, and any perceived weakness – real or imaginary – gets magnified.<\/p>\n
“I think the time for talking about fragility is over. This is war. And in this war, Oscar Piastri is the opponent. It\u2019s a gloves-off battle now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris will not leave McLaren, regardless of whether he loses the F1 drivers’ championship to Oscar Piastri…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-135052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}