{"id":244118,"date":"2025-10-27T12:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/244118\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T12:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:52:08","slug":"im-making-it-work-lando-norris-confident-he-is-finally-getting-to-grips-with-his-mclaren-lando-norris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/244118\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m making it work\u2019: Lando Norris confident he is finally getting to grips with his McLaren | Lando Norris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lando Norris has said he is finally confident handling his McLaren car after a dominant victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix<\/a> that moved him to the top of the world championship standings with four races remaining.<\/p>\n

The British driver won at the Aut\u00f3dromo Hermanos Rodr\u00edguez with a superb drive from pole to flag. With his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri finishing only fifth and Red Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen in third, the Briton now leads Piastri by one point and Verstappen by 36. Piastri had held the title lead since the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix<\/a> but Norris has moved to the front as the championship enters its final run-in.<\/p>\n

He has struggled for much of the season, particularly in qualifying, not enjoying the feel of the grip from the front axle as much as he would like while Piastri enjoyed a strong run of results. Norris has since made a concerted effort to adapt to it and has demonstrated very good form in recent races just as the Australian\u2019s performances have dipped.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly when the car was winning and Oscar was winning, the last thing I could do is use the excuse that my car is not good enough,\u201d said Norris. \u201cI wasn\u2019t getting to grips and wasn\u2019t finding a way to make it work, and I\u2019m finding a better way to make it work now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s as simple as that. Of course, it gives you good confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

McLaren\u2019s team principal, Andrea Stella, noted that Norris excels in the low-grip conditions as was the case in Mexico and made the most if it, having been all but untouchable and felt the team as a whole had emerged well from the weekend especially after the recent resurgence in form of Verstappen and Red Bull.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will just strengthen Lando\u2019s confidence and it will be important for the final four races,\u201d Stella said. \u201cBoth Lando and Oscar go into the final four races with reasons to be confident. The team also goes into the final four races with more understanding of how to extract performance from the car consistently.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also felt both drivers and McLaren had every reason to expect to be competitive at the remaining meetings in Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe confidence in terms of the championship has increased. It\u2019s increased because we have proven that we have a car that can win races and, in some conditions, can dominate races,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the final four races, there\u2019s no reason to think that one may favour one driver or the other. Vegas, if anything, has proven to be a challenge for McLaren overall. Last year, we were not competitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Lando and Oscar, there\u2019s no problem in terms of track layout coming in the next four races. If anything, we need to make sure that from a McLaren point of view, we are in condition to extract the full performance that is available in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris has said he is finally confident handling his McLaren car after a dominant victory at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-244118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244118","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=244118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}