Reigning world champion Lando Norris has said his old friend George Russell is \u201cgiddy\u201d with excitement at being title favourite for Formula 1\u2019s 2026 season.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s exactly where Norris was 12 months ago — the McLaren driver eventually delivered on that billing to win his maiden F1 championship at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Mercedes\u2019 new 2026 project has been hyped for a while and its strong appearance at the Barcelona \u2018Shakedown\u2019 only reinforced the good feeling about its chances.<\/p>\n
Norris, speaking to select media ahead of the new season, said that he enjoyed seeing Russell in that spot.<\/p>\n
When asked how his interactions with other F1 rivals have gone now he\u2019s champion, he said: \u201cI spoke to Alex [Albon] and George the other day because we played padel together. Especially with them because we kind of came into F1 at the same time, I think it created more hunger for them [that I\u2019m champion].<\/p>\n
The Englishman then laughed, adding: \u201cEspecially for George because he is the bookies favourite, he\u2019s all a bit giddy at the moment! That\u2019s a great thing to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview with Sky Sports, Norris also joked: \u201cHe is the massive favourite, to be honest with you! I completely agree with the bookmakers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norris has no doubt his fellow countryman has what it takes to win the title.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and George get along well. It\u2019s not like we talk every day. But I think we have a lot of respect for each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shows that towards me and I completely believe he\u2019ll win a championship in the future, whether that\u2019s this year or next year, whatever it may be. I\u2019ve enjoyed my battles with him, and he\u2019s a lovely guy, so I\u2019ve enjoyed all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
F1\u2019s season starts with the Australian Grand Prix on March 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reigning world champion Lando Norris has said his old friend George Russell is \u201cgiddy\u201d with excitement at being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-457702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}