{"id":163699,"date":"2025-09-23T14:47:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T14:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/163699\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T14:47:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T14:47:04","slug":"lando-norris-hits-f1-with-told-you-so-jab-as-max-verstappen-enters-the-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/163699\/","title":{"rendered":"Lando Norris hits F1 with told you so jab as Max Verstappen enters the fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the world wakes up to a Max Verstappen title challenge, Lando Norris says people should stop being surprised by Red Bull\u2019s pace, after all, they were never that far off.<\/p>\n

Verstappen appeared, at least in the maths, to be down out \u2013 although not out \u2013 in the F1 2025 title race when he dropped 97 points behind Oscar Piastri after winning just two races before F1\u2019s summer break.<\/p>\n

Max Verstappen, the F1 2025 World Champion?<\/p>\n

With his points to the championship leader up to 104 after the Dutch Grand Prix, it appeared to be game over for Verstappen in his bid to record five on the trot. <\/p>\n

But two races later, there\u2019s a little bit of spice \u2013 and Norris says I told you so.<\/p>\n

Adamant throughout the season that McLaren\u2019s advantage wasn\u2019t that big and that Red Bull wasn\u2019t that slow, Norris\u2019 words came to life in Monza and Baku when Verstappen raced from lights to flag to secure back-to-back wins.<\/p>\n

Wins that have seen the reigning World Champion put his name forward in the title fight.<\/p>\n

Although Verstappen is 69 points down on championship leader Oscar Piastri, he\u2019s taken 35 points out of the Australian\u2019s advantage in two races, and Norris\u2019 advantage in second place is down from 91 points to 44.<\/p>\n

The Brit fears this may just be the beginning of the Red Bull resurgence, one that he warned was on the horizon.<\/p>\n

F1 2025: The season\u2019s winners and losers<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0The results of the F1 2025 championship <\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49\u00a0The updated Drivers\u2019 and Constructors\u2019 Championship standings<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not often that they\u2019re slow, so people need to stop being so surprised that they\u2019re quick,\u201d Norris said after the Azerbaijan race.<\/p>\n

\u201cMax was winning races already at the beginning of the year. The whole season they\u2019ve been quick and the Red Bull\u2019s been good. They\u2019ve brought some upgrades to Monza, which seemed to have helped them even more.<\/p>\n

\u201co I\u2019m not surprised. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that they\u2019re an incredibly strong team with one of the best drivers ever in Formula 1. So we expect nothing less. They\u2019re going to make our life difficult I think for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we also know from our side, we struggled a bit here, Monza clearly we were not quick enough. We\u2019ve made improvements but things where the Red Bull has been so good and dominant in the past, they still have and we don\u2019t. <\/p>\n

\u201cToday when I was following the Red Bull there were clearly some areas where they were at another level to us. We need to understand why.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with a 69-point deficit to overcome to win the World title, Verstappen needs more than just a miracle, he needs to overturn history.<\/p>\n

In 2022, he came back from a 46-point adrift to deny Charles Leclerc a maiden title but this year even he accepts the task is more difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I don\u2019t rely on hope,\u201d said the 27-year-old. \u201cBut it\u2019s seven rounds left. 69 points is a lot. So I personally don\u2019t think about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just go race by race, what I have been doing basically the whole season \u2013 just trying to do the best we can, try to score the most points that we can. And then after Abu Dhabi, we\u2019ll know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read next: The biggest gaps overturned in modern F1 history shows the improbable task for Verstappen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the world wakes up to a Max Verstappen title challenge, Lando Norris says people should stop being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,818,1737,825,913,44,918,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-163699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-home-page","14":"tag-lando-norris","15":"tag-max-verstappen","16":"tag-mclaren","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-red-bull","19":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163699","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=163699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}