Lando Norris would welcome the prospect of having more battles with Lewis Hamilton in 2026, with the McLaren driver backing the seven-time World Champion to bounce back following a tough year.<\/p>\n
The 2025 campaign marked Hamilton<\/a>\u2019s debut for Ferrari<\/a> and proved to be a tricky campaign for the Briton, a season in which he failed to stand on the podium for the first time in his F1 career.<\/p>\n Norris<\/a>, meanwhile, became McLaren<\/a>\u2019s first Drivers\u2019 Champion since Hamilton in 2008, meaning that he will be defending his title in 2026.<\/p>\n With the season ahead posing some unknowns amid the introduction of new technical regulations<\/a>, Norris hopes to have the opportunity to fight against several of his rivals \u2013 including Hamilton.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve had a good amount of battles already,\u201d the 26-year-old told Sky Sports F1<\/a>. \u201cI would love to race a bit more with Lewis.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, Ferrari struggled a lot more this year than I think everyone was expecting. Lewis has proved himself to be probably the best of all time. Everyone knows if anyone can bounce back from difficult years, it’s Mr Hamilton, and I would love to race against him more.\u201d<\/p>\n Norris has relished the chance to compete against Hamilton during his time in the sport, as well as other World Champions and reputable names.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s always a privilege that I get to race against someone that is the best in the world,\u201d the British driver said. \u201cYou have got a good amount of those guys. You have Fernando [Alonso]<\/a>, Lewis, Max [Verstappen]<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s a lot of us that want to climb in the footsteps of these other guys. George [Russell]<\/a> and Oscar [Piastri]<\/a> are two of those and there’s so many guys on the grid.\u201d<\/p>\n While the new rules may present a degree of uncertainty, Norris is embracing the possibility of others trying to challenge him for the championship.<\/p>\n \u201cNext year, everyone’s got an opportunity,\u201d he explained. \u201cEveryone’s looking forward to it. People want to come to take my crown, and I want to try to retain it. And I look forward to that battle.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris would welcome the prospect of having more battles with Lewis Hamilton in 2026, with the McLaren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-400624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400624","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=400624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}