Lando Norris has been candid about F1 teams and their high-flying expectations. The Belgian-British team is aware that the current F1 season is seeing several squads rise to the level of Red Bull in terms of performance at the various races. Sometimes, Ferrari emerges as the frontrunner while at other times, it is either Mercedes or McLaren that poses a challenge to Christian Horner‘s team. However, Norris believes that fans should stop glorifying a team based on their results from only one weekend and view the overall scores instead.

At the very start of this year’s F1 campaign, Red Bull posed a strong front with 1-2 spots in both Bahrain and Jeddah. But in Australia, the reigning Champions lost the challenge to Ferrari as its drivers got the 1-2 spots in Melbourne. Then came the Chinese Grand Prix, where Lando Norris emerged as the defending F1 title-holder Max Verstappen‘s biggest challenge. And the Belgian-British racer even seized a victory in Miami. Hence, in the first 11 races of 2024, fans got to see 5 different drivers take the winner’s trophy.

According to Lando Norris, this shows that all the teams are getting competent enough to chase after Red Bull. However, he also noted that the viewers should not be too quick to judge which team is the fastest. Elaborating on this, Lando told the ‘Beyond the Grid’ podcast, “Even when people bring an upgrade to one weekend, people are too quick to judge, okay, wow, your car looks like it’s the best all of a sudden. Like three weekends ago, everyone was saying, wow, Ferrari is the quickest car, next weekend it was like, oh, we’re [McLaren is] the quickest car, then it was Mercedes is the quickest. It’s too much kind of to and fro between teams, like, it’s so close. It’s not as simple as saying ‘you got it’ or ‘you got it’.”

Furthermore, Lando Norris referred to the time when Ferrari introduced a new front wing, new rear wings, a revamped cooling system, and mirrors to their SF-24 in Monaco. The Italian squad earned victory with Charles Leclerc on Sunday and people started reckoning the Scuderia as the fastest team. However, Verstappen turned the tables next weekend in Canada by grabbing his win. Hence, Lando emphasized, “It comes down to consistency and it comes down to a whole season. It doesn’t matter if we’re the quickest car for three races in a row if we’re gonna be terrible for the next five.” Additionally, the papaya army racer also spoke out about his ‘terrible’ Austrian GP outing.

Lando Norris calls out Max Verstappen for ‘unfair battle’ in Austria

Lando has repeatedly appeared in the top 3 at various races in 2024, and he even wanted to go for a Grand Prix win in Austria. That is why he tried attacking Max Verstappen after the Dutchman’s time-taking pitstop. However, while putting up a defense against Norris’ overtaking attempts, Max maneuvered his RB-20 in such a way that their cars came into contact. In the end, the clash left damage to Norris’ car and he had to retire from the race.

The Austrian GP left Lando Norris with zero points to his name. Fuming at the incident that transpired between him and Verstappen, he said, “I’m disappointed, nothing more than that, honestly. It was a good race. I looked forward to probably I’d say just a fair battle, a strong fair battle. But I wouldn’t say that’s what it was in the end.” Taking a dig at Max, the 24-year-old also claimed he would only have some ‘respect’ if he got an apology.

While Max Verstappen has not yet apologized after the Austrian GP incident, he landed an FIA penalty. This was the first time Verstappen and Norris had gone up against one another. However, in the upcoming races, the two will face each other again, since both have been gearing up for the World Championship win. Do you think this on-track competition can spoil Max’s relationship with Lando Norris? Or will they keep their professional differences aside and stay friends? Let us know your take in the comments below.